676 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



world, from the poles to the equator ; and they form the general sward 

 or carpet of greenery over by far the larger portion of the terrestrial 

 globe. Even in Britain alone, with our poor little insular flora, a mere 

 fragment of that belonging to the petty European Continent, we num- 

 ber no less than forty-two genera of grasses, distributed into more 

 than one hundred species. In fact, what may fairly be called degra- 

 dation from one point of view may fairly be called adaptation from 

 another. The organization of the grasses is certainly lower than that 

 of the lilies, but it fits them better for that station of life to which it 

 has pleased Nature to assign them. 



The various kinds of grasses differ very little from one another in 

 general plan ; the flower in almost all is constructed strictly on the 

 lines above mentioned ; and the leaves in almost all are just the same 

 soft, pensile blades, making them into the proper greensward for open, 

 unwooded, wind-swept plains. But, like almost all other very domi- 

 nant families, they have split up into an immense number of kinds, 

 distinguished from one another by minute differences in the arrange- 

 ment of the florets and the spikelets ; and these kinds have again sub- 

 divided into more and more minutely different genera and species. 

 One great group, with panicles of a loose character, and very de- 

 graded spikelets, has given origin to many southern grasses, from some 

 of which the cultivated millets are derived. Another great group, 

 with usually more spiky inflorescence, has given origin to most of our 

 northern grasses, from some of which the common cereals are derived. 

 This second group has again split up into several others, of which the 

 important one for our present purpose is that of the Hordeinece, or 

 barley- worts. From one of the numerous genera into which the primi- 

 tive Hordeinece have once more split up, our cultivated barleys take 

 their rise ; from another, which here demands further attention, we get 

 our cultivated wheats. 



The nearest form to true wheat now found wild in the British Isles 

 is the creeping couch-grass, a perennial closely agreeing in all essential 

 particulars of structure with our cultivated annual wheats. But in the 

 South European region we find in abundance a large series of common 

 wild annual grasses, forming the genus uJEgilojys of technical botany, 

 and exactly resembling true wheat in every point except the size of 

 the grain. One species of this genus, JEgilops ovata, a small, hard, 

 wiry annual, is now pretty generally recognized among botanists as 

 the parent of our cultivated corn. There was a good reason, indeed, 

 why primitive man, when he first began to select and rudely till a few 

 seeds for his own use, should have specially affected the grass tribe. 

 No other family of plants has seeds richer in starches and glutens, as 

 indeed might naturally be expected from the extreme diminution in 

 the number of seeds to each flower. On the other hand, the flowers 

 on each plant are peculiarly numerous ; so that we get the combined 

 advantages of many seeds, and rich seeds, so seldom to be found else- 



