THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



33 



of the grass itself mingles anJ falls with it — the soil car- 

 ries down the manure — the poverty of the mountain- 

 top feeds the richness of the valley. 



Numerous other plants, higher in structural grade, 

 but equally excluded from participation in the length- 

 ened career of usefulness distinguishing their fellows, aid 

 in the furtherance of the grand design, our grasses con- 

 stituting only a moiety, or rather a mere item in the 

 roll-list of Nature's brigade of pioneers ; they are, ne- 

 vertheless, among its more conspicuous and effective 

 leaders. 



These rock-dwellers are more than mere leaders, more 

 than simple volunteers to the van of vegetable progress ; 

 they are princes in their wild and breezy habitats ; 

 princes as firm and defiant, as absolute and tenacious of 

 authority and dominion, each in his own little nook of 

 hermit-solitde and circumscription, as were whilom 

 the castle-robbers of the Rhine, caged, but glorying in 

 their inaccessible fortresses. Once established in peren- 

 nial state, they seem to scorn alike the furious rushing 

 of the mountain torrent and every element of the raging 

 tempest, exerted to dislodge them from the chosen site. 

 Years may roll onward in the course of time, and the 

 destinies of nations may be overruled or changed ; but 

 the tuft of alpine grass still waves to every passing wind, 

 and holds its own above them. 



It is the depth to which their meandering roots extend, 

 and the intricate development of slender rootlets, grasp- 

 ing and filling every little crevice below the mouldering 

 surface, though all but invisible to human eye, that 

 enables the sturdy colonists to maintain the position 

 they have appropriated. No ordinary, no timid hold is 

 theirs. Does a hostile force strain one petty fibre, and 

 strive to loosen or impair its cling, a thousand coun- 

 teracting powers are at hand for its support; lever and 

 wedge, each modification of mechanical agency yet un- 

 named and unappreciated, is instantly at work to check 

 and triumph. 



The distribution of such grasses, apparently a mere 

 fortuitous circumstance, the lodgment by chance of an 

 inconspicuous seed wafted by the wind against a 

 mountain side or peak, is a dispensation no less de- 

 serving attention than the result which follows : set- 

 ting aside the secret agencies by which that seed was 

 produced and endowed with the attribute of growth, 

 what complicated powers have been invoked to bring it 

 hither ! hither, where only its capabilities could have 

 been availably called into action, and rendered sub- 

 servient to the solitary seeming purpose of their 

 creation. But all this has been provided for by the 

 adaptation of the seed itself — its distribution when cast 

 abroad, its security and fixity when deposited, its un- 

 erring growth or germination, and ultimate efficiency 

 to the task ordained. We will look at one of these 

 Alpine grasses, a distinguished member of its hardy 

 family, almost alone in beauty, but no less a striking 

 exemplification of the general law, under which, by 

 varied but ever competent provision of means, the dis- 

 persion and multiplication of plants is efiected. 



The illustration selected is the Feather-grass, Slipa 

 peimatn of botanists. The dense tufts of stiff, erect, 

 needle-like leaves mark the character of its birth-place 

 and position in the scale of vegetation. The high 

 mountain ranges of central and southern Europe 

 brought it forth, and its natural home is among their 

 loftier and most precipitous peaks. Needle-like are 

 its slender glaucous leaves ; nay, more resembling hairs 

 in fineness. With the exception of this latter feature, 

 so exaggerated even when compared with the nar- 

 rowest foliage of most others of the class of mountain 

 colonists, there is not anything extraordinary in its 

 general appearance at the first glance, not anything to 

 challenge our attention or dispose us to farther exami- 



nation. The flowers are even less conspicuous than 

 those of grasses generally. It is in the ripened fruit 

 or seed, so termed, alone, that we trace the all but 

 matchless elegance and beautyof structure, adaptation, 

 and design which demand our highest admiration. 



The paleffi, or inner scales of the flower, closely in- 

 vest and harden round the seed-like fruit, which thus 

 terminates above in a long thread-like awn, often nearly 

 a foot in length. The upper and longer portion of this 

 awn is beautifully fringed on opposite sides with short, 

 very delicate, silky plumes, whence the English name 

 of " Feather-srass." Frequently cultivated in our 

 gardens on account of this peculiarity, while bunches 

 of its ornamental feathered seeds have their place 

 among the many graceful decorations of modern dwel- 

 ling-houses, description would be scarcely required, 

 were not the admirable mechanism involved in these 

 appendages more remarkable than their singularity 

 and decorative character. Their buoyancy favours 

 the wide distribution of the seed by the action 

 of the wind, at the same time that their structure 

 determines its adhesion to the spot whereon it 

 may alight. To effect the latter, the feathered 

 or fringed portion of the awn is bent at an angle 

 of 45 degrees, and capable of being acted upon 

 in the manner of a vane when the wind is blowing ; 

 while the base of the fruit or seed which it terminates 

 is sharply pointed, so as to ensure its hold in a per- 

 pendicular position, wherever the point penetrates. 

 Thus situated, every varying breath of wind commu- 

 nicates a more or less rotatory movement to the plume, 

 and the necessary deep insertion of the seed is provided 

 for by a long screw-like twist of the naked part of the 

 awn rising straight above it below the bend, the volu- 

 tions of which, as they become successively buried, 

 prevent its return to the surface. It is, in fact, thus 

 screwed down into the light soil or sand filling a 

 ci'evice, or occupying a hollow in the rock, in which 

 it soon begins to vegetate. 



It is not every Alpine or rock grass that exhibits so 

 strikingly its adaptation to the circumstances of its 

 existence ; but in all cases examination will lead to the 

 recognition of some beauty of design, and fitness to the 

 position destined to be occupied. To trace the diversity 

 of means through which such purposes as those above 

 described are individually effected is unnecessary, and 

 would lengthen our details greatly. In no two species 

 do they correspond ; and, as among animals, the 

 function of breathing and its results may be fulfilled 

 through the medium of lungs, or gills, or pores ; so, 

 among the colonizing grasses, the distribution and 

 planting of the seeds are events secured by very dif- 

 ferent, but equally efficient contrivances. 



The rock-grasses, in their high mountain habitats, 

 are perhaps less strictly colonists than their brethren of 

 the sandy wastes below. They furnish soil, but not to 

 their own localities : no effect of their growth is mani- 

 fest upon the rock that bears them. Their duty is a 

 constant and essential one elsewhere ; but no change, 

 save that of stone-disintegration, takes place on the sur- 

 rounding stony surface. As at first its little time-worn 

 clefts and hollows yielded place to the wandering seed, 

 so do they still ; but nothing more. No accumulation 

 of organic matter courts vegetation of a higher grade to 

 settle on its bleak exposure : the jutting pinnacle and 

 the overhanging or perpendicular precipice remain as 

 bare and unswathed by mantling verdure as ever. But 

 the level table-land and the sandy sea- side plain afiford 

 a resting-place for all that Nature sends there. These 

 are the resorts of the true plant-colonists ; these are the 

 sites where soil may accumulate from year to year, until 

 at length the fertile and well-stocked pasture may suc- 

 ceed the desolate and solitary wilderness. These are 



