Newfoundland to Manitoba, Through Canada's Maritime, Mining, and Prairie Provinces

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1881. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... Weeds in North America. 287 on the public road, every boy, every passing herd of sheep or cows gives them a lift. Ours is a very weedy country because it is a roomy country. Weeds love a wide margin, and they find it here. You shall see more weeds in one day's travel in this country than in a week's journey in Europe. Our culture of the soil is not so close and thorough, our occupancy not so entire and exclusive. The weeds take up with the farmers' leavings, and find good fare. One may see a large slice taken from a field by elecampane, or by teasel, or by milk-weed; whole pastures given up to white-weed, golden-rod, wild carrots, or ox-eye daisies; meadows overrun with bear-weed, and sheep pastures nearly ruined by St. John's wort or the Canada thistle. Our farms are so large and our husbandry so loose that we do not mind these things. By and by we shall clean them out. Weeds seem to thrive here as in no other country. When Sir Joseph Hooker landed in New England a few years ago, he was surprised to find how the European plants flourished there. He found the wild chicory growing far more luxuriantly than he had ever seen it elsewhere, 'forming a tangled mass of stems and branches, studded with torquoise blue blossoms, and covering acres of ground.' This is one of the weeds that Emerson puts in his bouquet, in his ' Humble-bee '-- 'Succory to match the sky.' Is there not something in our soil and climate exceptionally favourable to weeds--something harsh, ungenial, sharp-toothed that is akin to them? How woody and rank and fibrous many varieties become, lasting the whole season, and standing up stark and stiff through the deep winter snows--dessicated, preserved by our dry air! Do nettles and thistles bite so sharply in any other country? To know how sharply t...