Note 49 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Josselyn, who wrote about fifty years after the foundation of the first British colony in New England, says that the settlers at Plymouth had observed more than twenty English plants springing up spontaneously near their improvements.
Every country has many plants not now, if ever, made use of by man, and therefore not designedly propagated by him, but which cluster around his dwelling, and continue to grow luxuriantly on the ruins of his rural habitation after he has abandoned it. The site of a cottage, the very foundation stones of which have been carried off, may often be recognized, years afterward, by the rank weeds which cover it, though no others of the same species are found for miles.
"Mediæval Catholicism," says Vaupell, "brought us the red horsehoof—whose reddish-brown flower buds shoot up from the ground when the snow melts, and are followed by the large leaves—lægekulsukker and snake-root, which grow only where there were convents and other dwellings in the Middle Ages."—Bögens Indvandring i de Danske Skove, pp. 1, 2.