The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-04-16

tanacetum the average patient thinhx of some rare drug. Yet !s is nothing more than tansy. of which so.oo0 pounds are annually imported. The, cents pound Catnip tastes better when called cataria. and probably has better effect on the patient. The price paid for it's dried leaves and Towering tops is from 2 to s cents . pound. Boueset is . favorits drug when called Eupatorilum. wearinE. such a high-seunding name 1t forKet4 that it ever was . weed. and the oldAf doctors will promptly declare that 1t is, about as near an all-founa remedy as medical scierice knows From to. cents pound ts the hgprs there is in the business of gathering aud dry ing boneset flowers and leaves Dried hoarhound leaves are worth from to cents a pound, yet America ini- ports about f50.o0o pounds a year tc supply the demand.
 The yarrow looks like valuabIs drug when wearing It's alias of achii- les. It is a atimuianf tonic and is often used. Biossominw on nearly ev- cry farms it yet reauires. importationn to supply the demand. The blessed thistle Is worth as high as 10 cents pound. II is cultivated in Germany. Jamestown weed is sort of pr. .s JskyH and Mt. Hyde. As stranoniuut RE8HEB in the pharmacopoeia. It is then an honor to the potato family. of which 1t Is a member. About 16O 900 rounds of its leaves and 10000 pounds of its seeds are annually imported, under this name. When called "jinsson weed" t is about the most ili-smeiIing and pesky of all the herbs efs the aeid. From to [ cents pound is paid for the dried leaves and seeds.
 Tn addition to these there are many other common weeds which havs . commercial value. among them the wornseed. mustard. poison hemiock. deabane. the gum plant and the grifi- celia. There are nany weeds whiof are highly poisonous. and hundreds of lives are lost annually as . result of eating them. Even the fll-smelIin. rattleweed Is potsonous. Many waede are prolific beyond expression. For instance, 1t Is estimated that a large stalk or purslaine win have as many ! as million seeds. Some have been found that so a quarter million above thar. If every seed of purslaine should
 grow into q plant 1t would be Dat . few years until the entire surface of the earth would be covered with purs- lalne. ;s."
 City weeds are usuaiss thoronshly cosmopolitan, and are giobe-trotters. The great majority of them began thair career in Asia. From there they were carried by the routes of travel into Eu- rope, and from Europe they were transferred to America. It is said there are many more varieties oE Eu- ropean and Asiatfo weeds near the | American seaboards than In the inland sections. The. remarkable law of adaptation shows up with caTneo-llke ciaarneBs among the weeds. Accustomed to fight ing their own battles. tp overcoming
 the hardest sort of obstscfes. they have become self-reliant. and can thrive under almost any kind of en- vironment On the other hand. some or the staple crops have been coddIed 1 and cosseted so long that they have | learned to lean almost entirely on the
 support of man. It Is said that beans,
 tobacco lentils. corn and wheat have | reached that stage where they would
 become extinct if man ceased to cuitl- f vate them.
 A weed has bean called plant out of place. Sometimes it is quite with-
 out honor in It's own country. yet of
 the royal purple in alien lands. New
 England likes the little pink-tipped l English daisy and oultivates tt with
 tender hand. Old England detests N
 as a troublesome lawn weed. Tho
 American farmer boy who nSvSf muiIisn was the son of . careIess faT-
 mer. while in Irish greenhouses that
 weed Is carefully cultivated as sthe American flannel piAnt." West of the
 MIssiasippi there are places where yar-
 row is highly prtxed under the alias of "1aee hower." Yet every Eastern
 farmer is put to to get rid of it. In the early Gays. when earth wac used as steamship tallast many weed stowawAys entered America One huss. l dred and three different kinds of weeAe
 have been found to have come in . 1t is expected that the day will come | when weeds will be priSsd here as they
 are in Germany. Only recently Lou
 isiana enterprise has undertaken to
 get oil from cociCleburPs. and it ie. the | prophecy of some that the eockieburP | will become a regular farm crop.
 (Copyright. 1908. by Frederic J. Has
 kin.)
 TOmorrew--Nnt Growing tA &maxisas