Translated from Ivan Tourguenef. BY Mrs. Bury Palliser. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. Full text is unavailable for this digitized archive article ...

T housands of years ago, a group of hunter-gatherers roamed the steppes of southern Russia, fishing in its rivers and hunting across its vast grasslands. They lived in a world without settlements ...

Salsola, I would discover, is their Genghis Khan. An invader from the Eurasian steppes east of the Ural Mountains, Russian thistle has shown an appalling ability to thrive in its adopted land.