infests the fields in eastern New
York; and live-forever, which thrives and multiplies under the plow
and harrow. In my section an annoying weed is abutilon, or
velvet-leaf, also called "old maid," which has fallen from the grace
of the garden and followed the plow afield. It will manage to mature
its seeds if not allowed to start till midsummer.

Of beautiful weeds quite a long list might be made without including
any of the so-called wild flowers. A favorite of mine is the little
moth mullein that blooms along the highway, and about the fields, and
maybe upon the edge of the lawn, from midsummer till frost comes. In
winter its slender stalk rises above the snow, bearing its round
seed-pods on its pin-like stems, and is pleasing even then. Its
flowers are yellow or white, large, wheel-shaped, and are borne
vertically with filaments loaded with little tufts of violet wool. The
plant has none of the coarse, hairy character of the common mullein.
Our coneflower, which one of our poets has called the "brown-eyed
daisy," has a pleasing effect when in vast numbers they invade a
meadow (if it is not your meadow), their dark brown centres or disks
and their golden rays showing conspicuously.

Bidens, two-teeth, or "pitchforks," as the boys call them, are
welcomed by the eye when in late summer they make the swamps and wet
waste places yellow with their blossoms.

Vervain is a beautiful weed, especially the blue or purple variety.
Its drooping knotted threads also make a pretty etching upon the
winter snow.

Iron-weed, which looks like an overgrown aster, has the same intense
purple-blue color, and a royal profusion of flowers. There are giants
among the weeds, as well as dwarfs and pigmies. One of the giants is
purple eupatorium, which sometimes carries its corymbs of
flesh-colored flowers ten and twelve feet high. A pretty and curious
little weed, sometimes found growing in the edge of the garden, is the
clasping specularia, a relative of the harebell and of the European
Venus's looking-glass. Its leaves are shell-shaped, and clasp the
stalk so as to form little shallow cups. In the bottom of each cup
three buds appear that never expand into flowers; but when the top of
the stalk is reached, one and sometimes two buds open a large,
delicate purple-blue corolla. All the first-born of this plant are
still-born, as it were; only the latest, which spring from its summit,
attain to perfect bloom. A weed which one ruthlessly