Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/187

Rh barley are irritating to the months of grazing animals, which attempt to eat them, though it is not probable that cattle avoid these plants on this account.

Gardeners often overlook some of the Weeds.—For many years the writer has had the oversight of two or three acres on which were grown some 2,000 kinds of plants. It is the exception to pass over a bed after a workman has 'dressed it up' and not find a number of weeds left among the cultivated plants. They are overlooked because of some resemblance of the weed to the plant desired. I enumerate a few examples found one day in the month of May: A few wild onions are left in the asparagus; wild seedling lilies in a plat of Solomon's seal and in a bed of turtle-head; June grass lurks in plats of several sorts of pinks, of Phlox and of many other plants; narrow-leaved dock is often abundant, and some of it is left in a plat of dandelions, of teasels, of rhubarb, of buttercups, of rue anemone; pig weeds are left to go to seed among potatoes and tomatoes; the brittle joints of prickly pear are left to grow among other species which they resemble; seeds of violets in variety spring up in plats of other violets where they were shot by the mother plants; chickweeds are rarely ever all discovered in plats of speedwells; while speedwell lurks among the snap-dragons; white clover is not all removed from plats of alsike clover, red clover and black medick; young plants of climbing fumitory are left in beds of ginseng, Dutchman's breeches and yellow puccoon; seedling wild cherries are overlooked among winter berries; ground-nut escapes notice as it comes up among hog pea-nuts, vetches, or