THK GHASSKS. <J 1 



aa embracing sheath to the cylindric or flattened culm, 

 they are invariably undivided, long, narrow and ter- 

 minating in a lengthened point. The vessels which 

 compose the leaf, after the manner of the Lilies, and 

 other plants of the great Monocotyledonous* class oi 

 the natural method, go off in right lines, and are nev- 

 er reticulated or branched. 



The flowers in the Grasses scarcely deserve the 

 name ; they are always herbaceous or greenish like 

 the leaves, from which, even to the philosophic eye, 

 they in reality scarcely differ ; for they have no sym- 

 metry in the number of parts with the stamens, which 

 are three ; the glume being constantly two-valved, or 

 leaved, except as in Alopecurus (Foxtail grass), and a 

 few others, where the two leaves are naturally ingraft- 

 ed together at the sides, and have only two distinct 

 points. The relation of the glume (both that of the 

 calyx and corolla) to mere leaves, or their sheathes, 

 would appear from their alternate order, one being 

 always outside or embracing the other which is interi- 

 or. The glume of the calyx even sends out a real 

 leaf in Cripsis and the Spinifex pumilus of the Mis- 

 souri. The name glume, then, given to the calyx and 

 corolla of the grasses, will serve at once to distinguish 

 this heteroclite class of flowers, there being, in fact, 

 among the Grasses no true calyx or corolla, merely 

 two or three sets of sheathes for the purpose of pro- 

 tecting the stamens. This abortion and anomaly of 

 parts operating against the symmetry of the flower of 

 the grasses goes yet farther, for we find two stigmas to 

 the production of one seed, but that seed is of an irre- 

 gular form, as you may at once observe in a grain of 

 Wheat, Oats, or Barley, which presents not a cylin- 



* So called from the peculiar character of their germination ; 

 sending up no seed-leaves or Cotyltdones, the mass of the seed 

 itself, undivided or single, remaining attached to the summit of 

 the root of the young plant. 



