

x-'.^v 





. -s*^ 



/ 



The coin is already high, though it is still green, and the glories of 

 the scarlet poppies peer out from its depths — a joy to the artistic soul, 

 though the farmer Io\-es them not. The>' will make a delightful 

 subject for our first sketch. The intense orange-scarlet of the petals is 

 rather a difficult hue to reproduce, but if we keep 

 them very fresh and pure, orange vermilion, rose 



madder and Indian yellow, used judiciously, with -, 



a strong, dark background by wa>- of contrast, "'{ 



ought to give us a good effect. 



I have found it a good plan, when requiring 

 poppies for further study at home, to select some 

 buds, instead of flowers fully out. These buds, if 

 taken home and placed in water near a window 

 (having previously had their stems cut), will open 

 beautifully ; and, if undisturbed, will live long 

 enough to enable us to study them with care. 

 What a pretty group they make, with a few delicate 

 grasses, or, best of all, some graceful heads of oats, 

 with them ! 



Now is the time when the beautiful flowering 

 grasses are at their best, and this particular class 

 of plants is so interesting, so attractive to the eye, 

 so useful and necessary to both man and beast, 

 that I think it would well repay our trouble and 

 attention if in this talk we made a special study 

 of them. 



We must remember they belong to a very large 

 family, a family including some of our most useful 

 and necessary cereals — even the " staff of life " 

 itself; for it comprises wheat, besides barley, maize, rye, oats, rice, 

 and even sugar-cane. 



They are all so beautiful and varied in form that, apart from 

 their utilitarian interest, the artist and the student must find much 

 pleasure and delight in their careful study. They even afford a 

 vast field of research for the arch;tologist as well, finding traces, 

 as he does, of their cultivation in remote ages before the earliest °'""' »"■ " 

 known civilisations of the world, and also in the time of dynasties Ar^eT 

 long, long passed away. "The niac sc 



T51. *" . , . . . inU-grasse; 



i"lmy gives us his opmion that cultivated barley is the most ancient Have made 

 of all, and modern authorities support his view, as three varieties of 

 this cereal have been discovered in the ancient lake dwellings of 

 Switzerland, belonging to the Stone Age. Nothing is definitely known 

 of the original wild form of their ancestors, and possibly the varieties we 

 find .so u.seful in the present day are widely different from their primitive 

 forerunners. 



^* ■?»* 



■ * / 



i* 





\ 





gue, 



without shape. 



For the wind to 



45 



