Aira antarctica blooms alone in a region of "thickribbed ice;" and in the far north, in Iceland, Greenland, and the extreme latitude of 70°, Trisetum subspicatum, which has perhaps a greater geographical range than any plant with which we are acquainted, braves the sleet and darkness, and during the short Arctic summer puts forth its pretty blossoms, and ripens abundance of seeds.

In the exercise of that spirit of thankful affection, with which the true naturalist surveys the world around him, the universality of grass is a fact accepted as a distinct teaching of the kindly regard for the happiness of all creatures, which is so prominent a feature in the plan of creation. In herbage and grain the grasses furnish a larger amount of sustenance to animal life than all other tribes of plants together; and so profusely have they been shed abroad in every conceivable variety, as climate, soil, and situation may influence their growth, that the earth has taken their colouring for a garment, and presents a firmament of green almost as unbroken as the upper firmament of blue, which is the only other prevailing tint in Nature. No matter how elevated or how barren the spot, grasses of some kind will make themselves a home in it; and when every variety of soil and climate has been furnished with its appropriate kinds, others find for themselves sites in water, carpeting the bed of the brook, or binding the shingle together on the shore of the sea; others on ruins, house-tops, and subterranean retreats, if but a glimpse of daylight reach them. In that remarkable work, "The Flora of the Colosseum," in which Dr. Deakin has described 420

plants found growing spontaneously on the ruins of the Colosseum at Rome, there are no fewer than fifty-six grasses entered as flourishing in various parts of that venerable ruin; those fifty-six include examples of Arenaria, Avena, Briza, Bromus, Festuca, Hordeum, Lolium, and Poa, besides that farmer's friend, Anthoxanthum odoratum, which is said, but erroneously, to be the sole source of the fragrance of the new-mown hay. This universality of grass is one of the most poetical of facts in the economy of the world. There is no place which it will not beautify. It climbs up the steep mountain passes which are inaccessible to man, and forms ledges of green amid the rivings of the crags: it leaps down between steep shelving precipices, and there fastens its slender roots in the dry crevices which the earthquakes had rent long ago, and into which the water trickles when the sunbeams strike the hoary snows above. There it shakes its plumes in the morning light, and flings its sweet, sweet laughing greenness to the sun; there it creeps and climbs about the mazes of solitude, and weaves its fairy tassels with the wind. It beautifies even that spot, and spreads over the sightless visage of death and darkness the serene beauty of a summer smile, flinging its green lustre on the bold granite, and perfuming the lips of morning as she stoops from heaven to kiss the green things of the earth. It makes a moist and yielding carpet over the whole earth, on which the impetuous may pass with hurried tread, or the feet of beauty linger. Wherever it is seen it makes a velvet carpet of emerald beauty—a carpet on which the heavy heart may sometimes tread, but on which joy mostly wanders; and

from this universality of growth grass derives its name, as will be proved by Chapter

III. ITS NAME.

The word " grass means simply that which grows. The Greek κράστις, οι γράστις (anglice grass), must be rendered gramen in the Latin, and gives the idea of something sprouty, verdant, lusty, and herbaceous-par excellence "grass." In the Gothic, it is gras; in AngloSaxon, gnar; German, grasz. In the Anglo-Saxon form the more precise meaning is, to grow, to sprout; applied to grass by the common method of converting generals into particulars. Thus, we get by a slight transition, to the Latin crescere, to grow; and hence to cress, simply a sprouting herb-quod in agris ubique crescit, "that which grows in every land;" grass, if you will, the universal source of verdure. Junius obtains the AS græs from growan, and certainly from one of these two we have the word green; the designation of the colour of grass, and of the cheerful, everyday serviceable garment of nature.

IV. ITS USES.

is

All our corn plants are grasses; so a blade of grass a proper emblem of utility, and of the physical basis of all civilization. Our bread is made of the seed of cereal grasses; our cattle browse the herbage of pasture grasses; the culture of cereals and the preservation of domestic cattle mark the progress of man from barbarism to industrial enterprize, from a degraded subsistence on the precarious crumbs of life, in abject dependence on spon

taneous growths and the flesh of wild creatures, to the enjoyment of plenty and comfort, and the establishment of a home. Wherever grass grows, beauty and utility are brought together; society is possible, and life ceases to be a strife and a pain. This chapter might be extended indefinitely, without it being possible to exhaust the subject of it. Corn and sugar, rice and paper, matting, cordage, thatch, the most substantial of our common necessities, and almost all our ordinary beverages-excepting coffee, tea, and wine-are furnished directly, or indirectly, from this wide-spread family of indigenous herbs. Amongst our native grasses are some that accomplish uses little thought of by the collector of specimens for a hortus siccus. Let us take one for an example-here is Psamma arenaria, a British grass, considered rare by inland botanists, but plentiful enough about Hastings, and other parts of the coast. Thousands of acres of land washed by the sea owe their preservation to it, for it forms creeping roots, which extend horizontally in all directions in its sandy bed, and it weavesthat sand into a matted felt capable of resisting the denuding action of the tides, and thus prevents the encroachment of the sea, by binding the drifting material of its margin together. Where you find this, you may also look out for Elymus arenarius, Carex arenaria, and Festuca rubra, and you will doubtless find them all combined in preserving our sloping shores intact against the sea, where, but for such frail defences, the waters would eat away their boundaries, and swallow up vast tracts of fertile country. The protection of this grass was the subject of an enactment, in 1742, just as, at an earlier date, the Scot

tish parliament passed an act to protect Elymus arenarius. By the act of 1742, the cutting of the grass was prohibited, and the prohibition extended even to the proprietors of the soil. This same grass is the chief defence of the coast of Holland against the encroachments of the ocean; and a closely allied grass, Psamma Baltica, performs a similar service on the sandy coasts of the Baltic. This grass has hard elastic foliage, and tough culms, and at Hastings has been long in use for the manufacture of baskets, mats, and fancy goods, of which samples were exhibited by Miss Rock, of Hastings, in Class IV. of the United Kingdom Products, in the Great Exhibition of 1851. Suppose a waste of sand, on which, according to the superficial dicta, "nothing will grow ;" place this Hastings' grass on it, and let a thousand delicate fingers find tasteful and useful occupation in the conversion of its stems into articles of household use and ornament, and one despised weed may become the founder of a town, a city, or a colony. Phragmites communis, the common reed of our ditches, is another of these basket grasses, as well as one of the best of thatching materials; this makes culms of six to ten feet high, which are used to furnish the strong framework on which the finer grasses are woven, in the making of mats and baskets. What the mat grasses accomplish for the defence of sandy shores this giant grass does for river banks and the sloping sides of pools and ditches; its roots convert the loose boundary lines into firm water walls, and stay the progress of denudation.

We might take each of the known grasses, and specify their uses, without lapsing into commonplace; but the