672 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



triangular, and it has usually three stigmas or sensitive surfaces, thus 

 dimly pointing back to the three distinct cells of its lily-like ancestors, 

 and the three separate ovaries of its still earlier alisma-like progeni- 

 tors. In many species, however, even this last souvenir of the trinary 

 type has been utterly obliterated, the ovary having only two stigmas, 

 and assuming a flattened, two-sided shape. In all the carices the flow- 

 ers are loosely arranged in compact spikes and spikelets, with their 

 mobile stamens hanging out freely to the breeze, and their feathery 

 stigmas prepared to catch the slightest grain of pollen which may hap- 

 pen to be wafted their way by any passing breath of air. The varie- 

 ties in their arrangement, however, are almost as infinite among the 

 different species as those of the grasses themselves ; sometimes the 

 male and female flowers are produced on separate plants ; sometimes 

 they grow in separate spikes on the same plant ; sometimes the same 

 spike has male flowers at the top and female at the bottom ; sometimes 

 the various flowers are mixed up with one another at top and bottom, 

 a regular hotch-potch of higgledy-piggledy confusion. But all the 

 sedges alike are very grass-like in their aspect, with thin blades hy 

 way of leaves, and blossoms on tall heads, as in the grasses. In fact, 

 the two families are never accurately distinguished by any except 

 technical botanists ; to the ordinary observer, they are all grasses 

 together, without petty distinctions of genus and species. Like the 

 grasses, too, the sedges are mostly plants of the open, wind-swept plains 

 or marshy levels, where the facilities for wind-fertilization are greatest 

 and most constantly present.* 



And now, from this illustrative digression, let us hark back again 

 to the junction-point of the rushes, whence alike the sedges and the 

 grasses appear to diverge. In order to understand the nature of the 

 steps by which the cereals have been developed from rush-like ances- 

 tors, it will be necessary to look shortly at the actual composition of 

 the flower in grasses, which is the only part of their organism differ- 

 ing appreciably from the ordinary lily type. The blossoms of grasses, 

 in their simplest form, consist of several little green florets, arranged 

 in small clusters, known as spikelets, along a single common axis. Of 

 this arrangement, the head of wheat itself offers a familiar and excel- 

 lent example. If we pull to pieces one of the spikelets composing 

 such a head, we find it to consist of four or five distinct florets. Omit- 

 ting special features and unnecessary details, we may say that each 

 floret is made up of two chaffy scales, known as pales, and represent- 

 ing the calyx, together with a pair of small white petals known as 

 lodicules, three stamens, and an ovary with two feathery styles. 

 Moreover, the two pales or calyx-pieces are not similar and symmet- 



* The sedges are not, in all probability, a real natural family, but are a group of 

 heterogeneous, degraded lilies, containing almost all those kinds in which the reduced 

 florets are covered by a single conspicuous glume-like bract. It will be seen from the 

 sequel that these bracts are not truly analogous to the glumes or outer palese of grasses. 



