ctar in the
columbine, and the bumblebee sometimes gets it by piercing the spur
from the outside, as she does with the dicentra. There ought to be
honey in the honeysuckle, but I have never seen the hive bee make any
attempt to get it.

WEEDS

One is tempted to say that the most human plants, after all, are the
weeds. How they cling to man and follow him around the world, and
spring up wherever he sets his foot! How they crowd around his barns
and dwellings, and throng his garden and jostle and override each
other in their strife to be near him! Some of them are so domestic and
familiar, and so harmless withal, that one comes to regard them with
positive affection. Motherwort, catnip, plantain, tansy, wild
mustard,--what a homely human look they have! they are an integral
part of every old homestead. Your smart new place will wait long
before they draw near it. Our knot-grass, that carpets every old
dooryard, and fringes every walk, and softens every path that knows
the feet of children, or that leads to the spring, or to the garden,
or to the barn, how kindly one comes to look upon it! Examine it with
a pocket glass and see how wonderfully beautiful and exquisite are its
tiny blossoms. It loves the human foot, and when the path or the place
is long disused other plants usurp the ground.

The gardener and the farmer are ostensibly the greatest enemies of the
weeds, but they are in reality their best friends. Weeds, like rats
and mice, increase and spread enormously in a cultivated country. They
have better food, more sunshine, and more aids in getting themselves
disseminated. They are sent from one end of the land to the other in
seed grain of various kinds, and they take their share, and more too,
if they can get it, of the phosphates and stable manures. How sure,
also, they are to survive any war of extermination that is waged
against them! In yonder field are ten thousand and one Canada
thistles. The farmer goes resolutely to work and destroys ten
thousand and thinks the work is finished, but he has done nothing till
he has destroyed the ten thousand and one. This one will keep up the
stock and again cover his fields with thistles.

Weeds are Nature's makeshift. She rejoices in the grass and the grain,
but when these fail to cover her nakedness she resorts to weeds. It is
in her plan or a part of her economy to keep the ground constantly
covered with vegetation of some sort, and