s, mingling its foliage secretly with its host, comes down with
the stream tangles to the village fences, skips over to corners of
little used pasture lands and the plantations that spring up about waste
water pools; but never ventures a footing in the trail of spade or
plough; will not be persuaded to grow in any garden plot. On the other
hand, the horehound, the common European species imported with the
colonies, hankers after hedgerows and snug little borders. It is more
widely distributed than many native species, and may be always found
along the ditches in the village corners, where it is not appreciated.

The irrigating ditch is an impartial distributer. It gathers all the
alien weeds that come west in garden and grass seeds and affords them
harbor in its banks. There one finds the European mallow _(Malva
rotundifolia_) spreading out to the streets with the summer overflow,
and every spring a dandelion or two, brought in with the blue grass
seed, uncurls in the swardy soil. Farther than either of these have come
the lilies that the Chinese coolies cultivate in adjacent mud holes for
their foodful bulbs. The _seegoo_ establishes itself very readily in
swampy borders, and the white blossom spikes among the arrow-pointed
leaves are quite as acceptable to the eye as any native species.

In the neighborhood of towns founded by the Spanish Californians,
whether this plant is native to the locality or not, one can always find
aromatic clumps of _yerba buena_, the "good herb" (_Micromeria
Douglassii_). The virtue of it as a febrifuge was taught to the mission
fathers by the neophytes, and wise old dames of my acquaintance have
worked astonishing cures with it and the succulent _yerba mansa_. This
last is native to wet meadows and distinguished enough to have a family
all to itself.

Where the irrigating ditches are shallow and a little neglected, they
choke quickly with watercress that multiplies about the lowest Sierra
springs. It is characteristic of the frequenters of water borders near
man haunts, that they are chiefly of the sorts that are useful to man,
as if they made their services an excuse for the intrusion. The
joint-grass of soggy pastures produces edible, nut-flavored tubers,
called by the Indians _taboose_. The common reed of the ultramontane
marshes (here _Phragmites vulgaris_), a very stately, whispering reed,
light and strong for shafts or arrows, affords sweet sap and pith which
makes a passable sugar