Mow Those Weeds

1916

Have you mowed those weeds? Then your farm is worth more and you are a better neighbor and a better citizen than if you hadn't. Everyone thinks more of the farmer and farm if he sees the weeds neatly mowed as he drives along a well-dragged road. As he passes the end of the line fence, he sees a fence row, not a weed row, and the same is true of the cross fence.

Does this describe your farm? Then rabbit shooting may not be so good on it next winter, but buyers will offer you more an acre on it because they know it will take less work to make crops on it for a number of years than if all that weed seed had not been harvested. If you still have that weed crop to harvest, you will have to hurry. Weed seed is getting nearer ripe every day. The hot, dry weather has hurried ripening instead of belating it. Burr-pulling time is coming, and the horse weeds in the fence rows are getting harder for the mower or scythe to handle, but there is some consolation in the thought that there is still time to do a great deal of good, and that too early mowing might have let the weeds come up and make another crop of seed. — Exchange.

Flora of Railroad Yards

1910

It has been noticed that many plants not natives of the locality are to be found growing in the neighborhood of great railroad yards.

Sometimes the seeds of these plants have been brought thousands of miles from their natural habitat. Often they flourish amid their new surroundings and gradually spread over the surrounding country. Thus trains carry unsuspected emigrants, which travel to and from every point of the compass.

In the Mississippi valley are to be found plants which within a few years past have thus been brought together; some from the Atlantic seaboard, some from the gulf region, and some from the other side of the Rocky Mountains. — Harper's Weekly.

What Alaska Indians Smoke

1910

"How would you enjoy a pipeful of wood shavings saturated with a strong solution of pepper as an after-dinner smoke?" asked William F. Quinn of Portland, Ore.

"Strange as this may seem as a substitute for tobacco, it is nevertheless used as such by Indians along the Alaska coast. Their mouths are often made raw by the practice, and the eyesight of many is affected by the strong fumes. It is no uncommon practice among farmers to smoke the leaves of the tomato and potato plants. While both these plants contain a narcotic poison, the smoking of leaves in moderation is harmless. Excessive use, though, produces a heavy stupor, from which the smoker awakes with a terrific headache and a feeling of utter exhaustion. Insanity and suicide have often been caused by the immoderate use of these two weeds. Rhubarb, beet, and even garden sage leaves are all smoked by farmers, but are perhaps the least harmful of substitutes for tobacco."