weed besides its good looks is that it yields honey or pollen to
the bee.

Another foreign plant that the Esopus Creek has distributed along its
shores and carried to the Hudson is saponaria, known as "Bouncing
Bet." It is a common and in places a troublesome weed in this valley.
Bouncing Bet is, perhaps, its English name, as the pink-white
complexion of its flowers with their perfume and the coarse, robust
character of the plant really give it a kind of English feminine
comeliness and bounce. It looks like a Yorkshire housemaid. Still
another plant in my section, which I notice has been widely
distributed by the agency of water, is the spiked loosestrife. It
first appeared many years ago along the Wallkill; now it may be seen
upon many of its tributaries and all along its banks; and in many of
the marshy bays and coves along the Hudson, its great masses of
purple-red bloom in middle and late summer affording a welcome relief
to the traveler's eye. It also belongs to the class of beautiful
weeds. It grows rank and tall, in dense communities, and always
presents to the eye a generous mass of color. In places, the marshes
and creek banks are all aglow with it, its wandlike spikes of flowers
shooting up and uniting in volumes or pyramids of still flame. Its
petals, when examined closely, present a curious wrinkled or crumpled
appearance, like newly-washed linen; but when massed the effect is
eminently pleasing. It also came from abroad, probably first brought
to this country as a garden or ornamental plant.

As a curious illustration of how weeds are carried from one end of
the earth to the other, Sir Joseph Hooker relates this circumstance:
"On one occasion," he says, "landing on a small uninhabited island
nearly at the Antipodes, the first evidence I met with of its having
been previously visited by man was the English chickweed; and this I
traced to a mound that marked the grave of a British sailor, and that
was covered with the plant, doubtless the offspring of seed that had
adhered to the spade or mattock with which the grave had been dug."

Ours is a 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 l