seems to think it a "friend to agriculture," and one of the "greatest blessings" that the farmers of Vermont can enjoy. It is my misfortune not to agree with the learned gentlemen of the Vermont University. I am happy to afford you an opportunity of giving a correct botanical description of the pernicious weed, as also a correct drawing of it. If the pains I have taken to procure the plant should afford you any, the least, satisfaction, I shall think myself amply rewarded. I wish to do every thing in my power for the prosperity of our country. I am with much esteem, sir, TIMOTHY DEWEY. No. III. Letter from Daniel C. Sanders, Esq. of the University of Vermont, to a friend in Albany, on the excellence of the Canada-Thistle ; dated Burlington, 28th June, 1810. DEAR SIR, N. Y. 6 mo. 8, 1810." Your favour, dated " Albany, has just come to hand by mail. formation I possess concerning the plant which is called the "Canada Thistle." I have no evidence that the name is significant of its origin. It is to be found in every part of Vermont, and took possession of the lands before the oldest of the present inhabitants. The plant is not yet in bloom and maturity. I had cut off a head of it, in order to give you a botanical description of it. But its parts, necessary to a description on Linnæan principles, are not yet sufficiently ripened and expanded. Something further may be done, should you continue to desire it, whenever the sexual and seminal parts shall be matured. In the mean time, let me allay the fears and mitigate the complaints of your New-York agriculturalists. I have myself observed the thistle for eighteen years; and can speak certain things from knowledge, derived from my own experience. The plant is in itself unpleasant, armed at all points, and threatening hostility to every being who is bold enough to invade it. Its right to the soil is founded on possesion immemorial. The Vermont farmer, however, possessing physical power, forgot its imprescriptible rights. They united all forces to exterminate it," vi et armis." In a very early period of our existence as a state, the legislature of Vermont passed an act, not that it should grow any more, but that every landholder should cause the thistles to be mown before they were ripe and had any power to disperse the seeds to any greater extent. But amidst the "veto" of legislation and the " caveat" of spirited agriculturalists, nature said they should grow. As if they shared in the obstinacy of mankind, amidst resistance, they increased the more beneath the severest discipline of the hoe, plough, harrow legislation, and even the fire. The farmers absolutely despaired in the unequal contest. Since they have done nothing, the dreaded enemy has seemed to retire; and the thistles in this part of the world, have evidently and greatly diminished. We seldom know the extent of the blessings we enjoy. Some of our most experienced farmers, who laboured Dd with the greatest zeal to exterminate these thistles, now see in them, not enemies, but friends, in a rough dress indeed, but still salutary. Several advantages are obvious. 1. They enrich land, serving as a valuable manure. 2. They keep the soil loose. 3. They serve as food for cattle. The stocks of clover and other large grasses will be left often uneaten in a yard, but the thistle never escapes, being always the object of desire to some kind of cattle. 4. It is conceived to be healthy, a remedy or a preventive of the diseases common to the brute creation. One of the most experienced farmers in Vermont has lately expressed to me his wishes for the increase of this plant on his farm, where he once tried long and ardently to destroy it; but he now has fears that it will ere long totally disappear from this section of the country. Mowing it down before its seeds are ripe will not prove a sure prevention of its growth. The cultivation of land by hoeing and ploughing serves to extend and facilitate its perfection. Sowing lands with the ranker grasses will soon choak and destroy it. But, here, time seems to threaten its everlasting banishment, very contrary to all former expectations. Nature has, however, made large provision to ensure its permanency, two ways. 1. By propagation from its root. This runs into the ground to a great depth. Some say, it extends twelve feet beneath the surface. I have seen it grow well from the root left in cellars dug six feet deep from the top of the soil. Any part of a root will be enough to become the embryo of a new plant. 2. By its seeds. Nature ripens these about two feet above the ground, in a fine situation, elevated for easy dispersion. It is one of those composite flowers which opens its pericarpium when the seeds are ripe. These numerous seeds are endowed with wings, downy appendages, finely globular, which enable it to float in the air, and very generously waft the prolific race to distant fields, which are not its own. It is the swelling of its downy pinions which overcomes the resistance of its coats, opening a door for the eager seed to escape from the prison, where its further confinement would prove useless to all the purposes of vegetable life.-After all nature's ardent care to give this plant 66 a local habitation and a name," her success in Vermont does not seem to be adequate to her efforts; and threatens nothing inauspicious to the industrious cultivator of the varied field. I am happy to see you, amidst your literary labours, so engaged to promote the first interest of our beloved country, agriculture. However hasty the present letter, you may make any use you please of my observations on this subject, as they may tend to diminish the fears and complaints respecting the Canada Thistle. D. C. S. X. Botanical description of the Canada Thistle or Cnicus Arvensis, with Observations on the Means of destroying it, or preventing its Increase. Communicated in a letter to the Hon. S. L. MITCHILL, M. D. &c. from DAVID HOSACK, M. D. SIR, New-York, July 21st, 1810. I HAVE examined the plant which you sent me yesterday as the Canada thistle, and find that it is well known in Europe, both to the farmer and botanist. In Great Britain it is vulgarly called the cursed thistle, which appellation the Canada thistle no less merits in this country. You will find it described by Linnæus as the serratula arvensis. Mr. Curtis, in his Flora Londinensis, where you will see an excellent coloured figure of it, describes it as a species of carduus. Professor Willdenow, with more correctness, places it in the genus cnicus, retaining the specific name arvensis. Upon carefully examining the pappus, especially with a glass, you will find it to be manifestly plumose, which is the character by which he distinguishes the genus cnicus from the carduus and serratula. The following description of the plant by Mr. Curtis so perfectly corresponds with that with which our country is infested, that with the aid of the annexed drawing of the plant, made by my friend Mr. J. Inderwick, from the specimen you sent me, it will readily be recognised by the farmer into whose fields it may intrude itself, and thereby enable him to take those measures for its destruction which have been found by experience to be the most effectual. "RooT perennial, round, almost the thickness of the little finger, of a dirty white colour, penetrating deeply, and creeping far and wide STALK three feet or more in height, upright, somewhat branched, at the base round and somewhat wooly, above angular and smooth. LEAVES Sessile, alternate, lanceolate, cut in so as to be somewhat pinnatifid, the sides somewhat pressed together, sinuated, waved, and curled, spinous, above smooth, green, beneath paler, scarcely villous, the uppermost ones almost entire. FLOWERS middle-sized, of a pale purple colour, very fragrant. FLOWER-STALKS leafy, one or two flowered, above somewhat woolly. CALYX common to all the florets, ovate, contracted at top, imbricated, the scales numerous, pressed, close, lanceolate, sharp at the back, |