THE UBIQUITOUS THISTLE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2436, 27 October 1886, Page 2

THE ÜBIQUITOUS THISTLE.

There is no weed weedier or more übiquitous than the common thistle. In paradise, if we may trust John Miltonand the Sunday School books—wise, as usual, beyond what is written—there were no thorns or thistles, the creation and introduction of. the noxious ' trtba' upon this once innocent and thornlen earth being a direct consequence of the fall of man, and a stern retribution for Adam's delinquency. But since then 'the thistle has managed so to diffuse itself over the habitable globe that there hardly now remains a spot on earth without its own local representative of that ever-intrusive and conquering genusl! "Wherever civilised man goes, there the'thistle accompanies him as a mattter of, course in his various wanderings. It adapts itself to all earthly environments. Close up to the Arctic

circle you find it defying the indigenous reindeer r.itn «s jjnckly wings; under* the equu'ciil axy you may; 6baerve it acoommodiiiiiK :ts«lf most complaasotly. With a sardonic smile to tropical enetenee. and battling Tith the prickly cartuiat and the thorny acacias, to the manner born, fo- its fair share of the diy and arid .ilandsi. Even nettles are nowhere in

• iinpetition with it: in spite bf its' vainable and irritating sting, the nettle has not the plasticity and adaptability of constitntion that mark the atoue and sturdy thistle trilie Garnered aud harventud yearly with rhe »"»ruier'a oira. its aeeda have been gratuitously distributed by its enemy, man. in all climates ; and when once it gains the slightest foothold. its winged down enables it to diffuse itself ad infinitum through the viigiu soil of yet uiiconqueml and tnistly continents.— Longman'* Magazine.