Excerpt from The Indiana Weed Book Tough thistles choked the fields and killed the corn, And an unthrifty crop of weeds was borne. - Dryden. Long has it been said that An ill weed grows apace, yet few are the books that tell us how to check that growth. The wild.' plants which dwell most closely with us, those with which we are most familiar, are many of them weeds, yet of them and their history we know but little. Came they? How did they get here.2 What, if any, are their uses? What is their place among other plants in the great scheme of Nature? How can We best control or get rid of them? Those are the questions which we endeavor to answer in this book on Indiana weeds. By the U. S. Department of Agriculture it has been estimated that to crop and meadow lands weeds cause an average annual loss of one dollar per acre. As at least two - thirds of the area of Indiana is comprised of such lands it follows that the annual loss in this State is from weeds alone. This great loss falls almost wholly upon the farmer and it is for him, therefore that this book has been especially written. In the simplest man ner possible we have endeavored to describe the worst weeds of the State, show their place among other plants and give the most practicable methods for their control or eradication. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.