Plague of Thistles in Australia and New Zealand--How to deal
with them--Cnicus Acaulis, Great Milk Thistle, or Stemless
Thistle--Fierce Fight between two Seals, "Nelson" and "Villeneuve."
It is true to a proverb that one may have too much even of a good
It is true to a proverb that one may have too much even of a good
thing. It was the most natural thing in the world, for instance, that
our countrymen should have introduced the thistle, the national emblem,
into the fertile plains and straths of Australia and New Zealand,
to remind them of home, and to speak to them, even at the Antipodes,
of memories and traditions that patriotism will in nowise "willingly
let die." The inevitable result of such introduction, however, was
not foreseen, or rather was never thought of. A correspondent in the
province of Otago, in a very pleasant letter by last mail [August
1874] informs us that the "symbol dear" of Burns has so flourished
and spread over large tracts of land in New Zealand as to be already
an intolerable nuisance; so much so, that legislative enactments are
being passed, in view, if possible, to its total extirpation. "You
may think I exaggerate," says our friend, "but I positively do not,
when I tell you that in the course of a fifty miles ride the other day
I saw whole paddocks containing many hundred acres of splendid land
quite overrun with thistles, so close, and thick, and formidable,
that neither man nor horse could force a way through them. And such
thistles, too! I measured several that were quite eight feet in height,
and as thick in the stem as my wrist, with spikes on them as large
as horse-shoe nails, and as sharp-pointed as the sharpest needle. The
proprietor of one of the paddocks thus overgrown with thistles swore
at them awfully--and most unpatriotically, too, you will say, for he
was a Scotchman--when I spoke to him on the subject. I assure you it
is a very serious matter, for unless the obnoxious weed is somehow got
rid of, many places will soon be uninhabitable, and, as you can easily
understand, the evil is daily and rapidly becoming worse. The thistles
are at present ripe, with large heads like cauliflowers, and when a
smart breeze is blowing, where they are plentiful, the air is filled
with thistle-down like a heavy snow-storm. If you, who know so many
things, could only suggest some effectual way of ridding ourselves
of this pest, you would be doing us a very real service." At home,
too, thistles, if not more plentiful, are at least of larger growth
than usual. In a corner of our own garden, for instance, there is
still growing at the present moment a splendid fellow, nearly six
feet in height, to which we pay a daily visit in admiration of its
lusty growth, and the rich emerald green of its imbricated involucral
leaves. We have purposely preserved it unhurt till now, as something of
a curiosity, but in a day or two it must be cut down, for the seeds
are fast ripening, and it were unwise, if not actually criminal,
to allow them to escape on downy wings only to fall and germinate
after their kind, a very nuisance, elsewhere. Most herbaceous plants
will bleed to death if cut down two years running, just as they have
about attained half their growth; and we can only suggest to our New
Zealand friends that they should treat their thistle fields after a
similar fashion. Let them be mowed down when about half, or rather
more than half-grown, with the scythe for two consecutive seasons,
and we believe the roots will infallibly die and disappear. We
have known bracken, ragwort, and burr-dock, &c. very effectively
disposed of in this way, and have some confidence that thistles,
too, might be thoroughly eradicated by a similar process of vital
wounding at the hastiest stage of growth. From our correspondent's
description of them, we should say that the New Zealand thistles, so
loudly complained of, are of the same species as that in our garden,
the Carduus marianus of botanists, or Great Milk Thistle, a biennial
common over all Europe, but nowhere so plentiful as in Scotland,
whence it is probable that it is so frequently pointed to by poets,
painters, and patriots as the Scotch Thistle, though its claims to
the high honour of being the actual and real national emblem are
somewhat questionable. The tradition in the south and south-west,
where the true story, if ever there was a true story in the matter,
is most likely to have rooted itself in its perfectest form, is to the
effect that, during an invasion of the Norsemen, the Danes advancing
against the Scots on a dark night, one of their barefooted scouts,
when prowling about the Scottish encampment, chanced to tread on a
thistle, the sharp prickles of which piercing his foot, caused him
to utter a loud imprecation, which reaching the ears of the Scots,
hitherto lying in fancied security, warned them that the enemy was at
hand, and enabled them, instantly standing to their arms, to take their
foes at such disadvantage that the fierce Norsemen were totally routed
and driven to their ships with immense slaughter. The thistle that
thus opportunely prevented the Scots being taken unawares is still
pointed out, not, however, as being any of the large, formidable,
long-stemmed varieties, but the stemless thistle that spreads out
its leaves and spikes quite close to the ground, common enough in old
pastures and waste grass lands. The stemless thistle is botanically
known as the Cnicus acaulis, and lowly and unpretending as it may
seem at first sight, there is, we make bold to assert, no species
of thistle so well entitled to bear and boast the grand old legend,
Nemo me impune lacessit. Its spines are as fine, and quite as tough
and piercing withal, as the finest cambric needle; impossible, too,
of extraction, once it has fairly penetrated the flesh, except by
a surgical operation; and we have a shrewd suspicion that it is to
some extent poisonous, for, from the moment one pierces the flesh
till its expulsion by suppuration of the part, the pain is keen and
excruciating beyond conception. Barefooted Dane, Saxon, or Celt,
unexpectedly treading on a nearly ripe and full-formed Cnicus, might
well be excused an oath, however lusty and loud, in acknowledgment
and hearty execration of such an impediment. We can say something
of a Cnicus spike wound from personal experience. Several years ago,
when we were younger and lighter than we are to-day, we were vaulting
over a wall that divided an infield of corn from an outfield of old
pasture. Safely over, but alighting awkwardly, we slipped forward and
fell, instinctively stretching out our hands to secure ourselves as
we came almost headlong to the ground. The fall was nothing, but one
of our hands had, as ill-luck would have it, alighted, with all our
weight upon it, in the very bosom of a full-armed, irate Cnicus. The
palm of the hand somehow escaped, but one of the prickles entered our
wrist, and the pain was at once intense--stinging, sharp, and burning,
as if the spike was the point of a red-hot needle from the fire. It
could not be extracted, for it could not be seen; and there was nothing
for it but patience and such local applications as might best aid the
inevitable suppuration by which alone, after fourteen days' acute pain,
relief was finally obtained. Upon the whole, then, and keeping the
barefooted Danish scout tradition in view, we are disposed to consider
the stemless Cnicus as the true national emblem. If there be any doubt,
the honour, at all events, must be left between itself and the burly,
big-stemmed Marianus. Of a certainty, in any case, the cotton thistle
(Onopordon acanthium), though frequently spoken of by horticulturists
and amateur gardeners as the Scotch thistle, cannot be the species
indicated, for this last is not properly a Scotch plant at all,
it being rarely, if ever, found growing wild anywhere north of the
Tweed, though comparatively common in England. The first public and
properly authenticated mention of the thistle as the national badge
is, we believe, in an inventory of the jewels and wardrobe effects of
James III., about the year 1467. Whether there was an "ancient" Order
of the Thistle seems doubtful; what is commonly called the revival
of the order dates from the reign of James the Seventh of Scotland,
Second of England, in 1687.
A more natural and less apocryphal combat than the recent dwarf and
bulldog business at Hanley is the following. Be not alarmed; ours is
simply a brief account of a fight, fierce and furious enough to be
sure, but very natural--for of the Phocidæ, we suppose, as of the
"bears and lions" in the well-known hymn, it may be predicted that
"'tis their nature to"--a fight, then, between a pair of dog-seals in
the bay under our house a few evenings ago. In nothing else are the
results of the Gun Tax Act so pleasantly manifest as in the increased,
and still increasing, confidence and friendly relations now so happily
established between seals and sea-birds of every kind and the sea-side
naturalist, as, throwing books and papers for the time aside, he
takes his evening walk abroad within sight and sound of the setting
sunlit sea, that gently murmurs the while, as if for very gladness,
in response to the rosy smile of the departing god. Ever since the
beginning of summer, a large dog-seal, recognisable as such by his
immense, square, bulldog-like head and fierce hirsute beard, has
made our beautiful Onich Bay his favourite evening fishing-ground,
until we have come to know him perfectly; no difficult matter either,
for he has a curious grey patch, larger than one's hand, on his left
cheek, and, unlike most seals, sinks, not log-like, when he disappears
under water, but almost always with a lively "header," in which the
whole back, arched and shining, is brought to view, as if for our
special delectation, as we sit and watch his graceful motions with
a glass powerful enough to detect the wary and intelligent glance of
his beautiful dark-brown eye, and count, if need were, every separate
bristle in his moustache. He is a big and powerful animal, and when
in our bay doubtless accounts himself lord of all he surveys, for,
of the hundreds of seals in Loch Leven, he alone constantly frequents
this particular semi-oval, sandy-bottomed inlet, his size and strength
probably ensuring it to him as a sort of reserve, in which woe unto
the interloping poacher caught sight of flagrante delicto by the
bright eye of "Lord Nelson," as we have long since called him, and
all the people about call him, for he is now known to everybody in the
hamlet, and frequently spoken about with all the interest attached to
a wild animal, actually suspicious and shy, but perfectly harmless,
when, with a confidence extremely rare in animals of its kind,
it approaches human habitations. On the afternoon of Friday last,
"Nelson" was fishing, as usual, in our bay, which at the time was
mirror-smooth and calm as calm could be. We had watched him for some
time through our glass, and seen him come to the surface more than
once, and dispose of a flounder in his usual quiet and leisurely
way, when, somewhat to our surprise, we caught sight of another
seal, seemingly as large as "Nelson" himself, and about a hundred
yards from him; and at the same moment his "lordship" evidently saw
him too! There could be no mistake about it, for he, first raising
himself half-way out of the water, and gazing excitedly around, with a
splendid header and a very significant flourish of his hind flippers,
instantly dived; the stranger seal also, who probably knew what was
coming, diving immediately afterwards. What happened below is only
known to such subaqueous spectators as might be about at the moment;
we can only bear witness to what followed, and that was, that in
about two minutes there was wild splashing and violent commotion of
the waters near the spot at which the stranger seal had disappeared,
from the centre of which turmoil the two seals soon emerged, fighting
in fierce grip like a pair of enraged bulldogs. For several minutes
this wild combat continued; Greek had met Greek; the belligerents
hugging each other, bear-like, with their anterior flippers, and
tearing at each other's heads and throats with their terrible fangs,
for the canine teeth of seals are exceedingly formidable, and their
strength of jaw enormous. All this time they wrestled and rolled
over and over each other in deadly and desperate encounter, the sea
for yards around them one sheet of boiling, hissing foam, here and
there streaked with blood, as we could plainly discern by the aid of
the glass, for we had, in the meantime, advanced to the very margin
of the sea, and were standing within some thirty yards of them. In
the wild hurly-burly of the conflict, it was impossible to see or
say whether "Nelson" or "Villeneuve" was winning--for by the latter
name had our son, who was along with us, already dubbed the stranger
seal, as, with true boy-like interest and eagerness, he watched the
fight. Had there been any betting on the event, we, knowing "Nelson,"
and believing in his prowess--for it was impossible to be impartial
in such a case--would probably have laid two to one freely on our
favourite; remembering, too, the pithy Gaelic adage, "'S laidir cù air
a dhùnan fein:" Strong is the dog that has his own home knoll for a
battle-field! As it was, the battle was fought out and finished under
water, so that we were not privileged to see the last of it. After
a final fierce worry, in which the combatants reared their bodies
more than half-way out of the water, and much surface splashing and
somersaulting, the belligerents, as if by common consent, disappeared,
still fighting, however, as the hundreds of bursting bubbles that for
a time kept coming to the surface clearly testified. In about a couple
of minutes the stranger seal came to the surface, swimming rapidly
seawards; he had evidently had enough of it; and shortly afterwards,
"Nelson," known at once by the grey patch on his cheek, reappeared in
the centre of the bay, quietly floating about, as if thoroughly tired
of the tussle, and shaking his head dog-fashion now and again, from
which we gathered that "Villeneuve," though beaten, had left his mark
upon the victor, and the victor was in this wise very significantly
acknowledging the fact. It is worthy of remark, that throughout the
whole of this curious fight, though from first to last it was as fierce
and furious as anything of the kind could be, not a sound was uttered
by either combatant, except an occasional heavy, sigh-like breathing,
which was probably involuntary, and merely the natural result of
unwonted physical exertion. And yet seals are by no means dumb, for
their curious bleatings--we can find no better word for it--in the
breeding season, must be known to every sea-side naturalist. "Nelson,"
the reader will perhaps be glad to hear, is all right again, and, as
yet, sole admiral of our bay, in which at this moment, as we write,
he is busy fishing for supper.