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,