36 N. n. STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



cal fact. The substantive grass is allied to the verb to 

 grow, wh'ch, in its radical and primitive form, is restricted 

 to vegetable increase and development. Etjmologicall}^ 

 therefore, whatever vegetates, whether the microsopic 

 mould, which gathers upon the surface, penetrates the pores 

 and lines ihe cavities of larger vegetable products, the 

 moss which tapestries the rock or festoons the wood; the 

 herb which enamels the pastures and the woods, the cereal 

 grain, the edible bulb, the fruit-bearing shrub or tree, and 

 the gigantic stem of the forest vegetation, all alike is grass. 

 Grass, or the vegetable kingdom, is directly or indirectly 

 the sole source of animal nutrition, the only medium where- 

 by inorganic substances are made subservient to the crav- 

 ings of purely animal nature. Every movement of a limb, 

 every breath, every pulsation, every action of every organ, 

 every sensation, emotion or volition, every vital manifesta- 

 tion in short, detaches some atoms of the animal frame 

 from their organic combinations, emancipates them from the 

 mysterious influences of life, and brings them under the 

 direct laws of.naked chemical affinity. Each of these acts, 

 therefore, is accompanied with an actual loss of matter to 

 the animal which does or suffers it, and there is a constant 

 waste of substance, which must be supplied from external 

 sources. Inorganic nature furnishes no such supply, and 

 vegetable processes must separate her elements, re-com. 

 bine them, assimilate them, and convert -them into the ma- 

 terials of which the animal tissues are formed, or in other 

 words, vivify them, before they can be made to contribute 

 to human or brute nutrition. All animals, from the invis- 

 ible infusorials to the bulkiest inhabitants of air, earth, or 

 sea, feed alike on plants, or on other animated creatures, 

 which have drawn their stock mediately or immediately 

 from the " green herb," which in the beginning was "given 

 them for meat," so that every creature, that lives and 

 breathes, and " moveth upon the earth," depends at last 

 for its sustenance and increase ou that lower form of or- 



