We were removed from the condemned that night. After two or three days, with the aid of some friendly negroes and some burnt cork, I made my escape, reaching our own lines in nine days.
Of the five condemned, two escaped, one by feigning death after being shot, and the other was rescued by a friendly negro before death ensued. These two men reached our army later on, and corroborated my strange story of the ‘Lottery of Death.’ I think you will agree with me that I had cause for showing fear at least once in my life.
ABOUT WEEDS.
Somebody once characterised ‘dirt’ as matter in a wrong place. Now, a weed is a plant in the wrong place. It has a place in the economy of nature, no doubt, unprofitable or even noxious as it may appear to the farmer or gardener. It must not be forgotten, moreover, that even the humblest weed is worthy of patient examination, and is a marvel of physiological structure. Then, again, some of our hedgerow wildings vie in beauty of form and elegance of habit with the cherished garden plants. What have we more charming, for instance, than traveller’s joy (Clematis vitalba), bryony, dogrose, or the large white bindweed? And as to some other weeds, which of our garden plants figure so largely in pictures as the foxglove, purple loosestrife (Lithrum salicaria), the teasel, or the dock? Nevertheless, they are weeds, and as such, are entirely out of place on the garden or farm. Robbers and usurpers are they, to be ignominiously decapitated or uprooted, and consigned to the rubbish-heap or the flames.
Nature, it must be remembered, never sleeps; she either rewards the hand of the diligent with abundant harvests, or she scatters broadcast her thorns and thistles, as a punishment for man’s neglect. The seeds of many species of plants have wonderful vitality. We are not about to quote the ‘mummy wheat’ as an example; but well-authenticated instances are recorded of seeds that have preserved their vitality for upwards of half a century. The seeds of the charlock and others of the Cruciferous tribe are of an oily nature, and therefore capable of withstanding the effects of moisture, and will germinate after being buried for years. But the process of ‘soiling’ the banks of new railways affords evidence of the long-continued vitality of seeds. The surface soil which has been laid aside in heaps for the purpose, is thrown back and spread upon the banks; and among the multitude of grasses and weeds which spring up and form a dense emerald carpet, there are invariably species seldom if ever found in the immediate neighbourhood. In the case of forest fires in the Far West, almost an entire new vegetation succeeds. Occasionally, the extensive moorlands in the neighbourhood of Liphook, Hants, take fire, and burn for days. The heather is dotted over with seedlings of Scotch fir, which is indigenous in the locality. Many of these trees are consumed with the heather, and with them some inches in depth of the dried surface. Seeds from the fir-cones, dropped years ago, are partially relieved from the superincumbent pressure, germinate, and in a few years supply the places of those that are destroyed. But every summer breeze wafts the winged seeds of the thistle, dandelion, the coltsfoot, groundsel, and many others, far and wide. Borne aloft on their tiny parachutes, they sail along until a summer shower bears them down to a moist, warm, resting-place in the field or wild.
The great weed-army which infests farms and gardens in the British Islands numbers about one hundred and thirty species, and consists mainly of two great classes, namely, annuals (fruitful only once) and perennials (capable of producing flowers and fruit time after time). About a dozen, however, are biennials; four of these are thistles; and the most familiar of the remainder are the foxglove and the hemlock. Some of the most troublesome farm and garden pests are perennials, and among these, the most mischievous in their rapidity of growth and tenacity of life are the greater and lesser bindweeds (Convolvulacea) and the couch-grass (Triticum repens). Unless the soil be well dug and pulverised and thoroughly sifted, the attempt to eradicate either of these will be useless; every half-inch of the white crinkled roots of the bindweed or bit of couch-grass to which roots are attached will grow. The greater bindweed, perhaps, is the most difficult to get rid of, and is especially troublesome among evergreens. The tender, semi-transparent shoots stand quite erect under evergreens until they touch the lower branches; they then make rapid growth, and quickly cover the whole head of a laurel, bay, laurustinus, or rhododendron with a thick mantle of light-green leaves, twisted stems, and snow-white trumpet-shaped flowers. Beautiful in its way, no doubt; but what of the handsome shrubs it has stifled in its fatal caresses, and what of the weeks of hard labour that must be expended in the attempt to eradicate the pest?
In Italy, however, the white, underground stems of couch-grass are carefully gathered by the peasantry, taken to market in bundles, and sold as food for cattle and horses. They contain a considerable amount of starch. A variety of couch called matt grass is extensively used in Holland for binding together the sandy dunes and flats by the sea. Coltsfoot is a very troublesome weed; a variegated form of it, with handsome, bold, cream-edged leaf, is wonderfully persistent in forcing its way to other feeding-grounds. In one case under our own observation, its roots, which are tender and brittle, found their way from a bed, beneath a four feet margin of turf and an eight feet wide gravel path. The only place where one is not likely to find the root is where it was planted! In the case of the weeds hitherto particularised, it is useless to remove the part appearing above ground; and it is also so with several of the thistles; unless cut beneath the crown or collar, the result is simply to force the plant to make a fresh effort by throwing out numerous side-shoots.
A year or two ago, we were reminded by the Prime Minister, in one of his thoughtful and suggestive speeches at Hawarden, that ‘one year’s seeding is seven years’ weeding.’ One can appreciate the repetition of the adage when reflecting on the enormous increase of the common groundsel, or the still more extraordinary multiplication of the common poppy. All the year round, even when the temperature is below the freezing-point, the small yellow blossoms of the groundsel may be noticed, each with its bundle of winged seeds, while round the parent plant are a host of young seedlings. But such is the prodigious fertility of the common poppy, that a single plant will during its year of life produce forty thousand seeds! a rate of increase that would, it is computed, in the course of seven years cover the area of Great Britain; and furnish, we may further reckon, enough opium to lull the whole population into a last long sleep. The small seed escapes when ripe through the apertures at the base of the capsule.
Next to the poppy and groundsel we may place the charlock, chickweed, and corn marigold, all annuals, and to be easily got rid of before flowering by hoeing. Some years ago, I was told by an intelligent head-gardener in the island of Colonsay, in the west of Scotland, that seeds of the oxeye daisy arrived in some packages from London. In the course of a few years, oxeye had taken entire possession of the island. It is a perennial, and also seeds plentifully, and is therefore more difficult to destroy. Both the latter and the yellow corn marigold (Chrysanthemum segetum) are now affected by the æsthetic world, and are assuming importance as articles of commerce, thousands of bunches being disposed of on market-days at Covent Garden.
Americans inform us that about two hundred and twenty species of weeds have been imported into their country, mostly from the British Islands. In 1837, there were said to be only one hundred and thirty-seven. The common plantain is known among the Indians as the ‘Englishman’s foot,’ as though following the steps of the white settlers. The common yellow toadflax was, it is said, introduced by a Mr Ranstead as a garden flower, and is now known as the Ranstead weed. In 1788 it had overrun the pastures in the inhabited parts of Pennsylvania, and was the cause of bitter complaints. Chickweed is said to have been introduced as bird-seed, and the Scotch thistle arrived in a bedtick filled with thistle-down. Feathers being cheap, the bed of down was replaced by feathers, and the former thrown by the wayside. The seed soon found a congenial home. There is a troublesome American water-weed, however (Anacharis alsinastrum), which has avenged our transatlantic cousins threefold by choking our ponds, rivers, and canals. Another little intruder from the Cape (Azolla pinnata) may be troublesome. It is a charming little aquatic, and most interesting under the microscope. Some one had thrown a handful of it on a pond we wot of, where the common duckweed (Lemna) flourished; but azolla quickly monopolised the whole surface and crowded out the duckweed.