CLASS III. ORBIR Il.l GRASSES. W 



ed, from a very early period, even in the history of monarchy, has been 

 used to express the breaking of treaties, and dissatisfaction ; it is now, 

 in the emblematic language of Flora, used to express a feeling of dis- 

 sention, or rupture ; and Grass, from its extensive distribution, use, 

 and value, as a token of utility. 



Zea Mays is the name of the now-so-generally-known Indian Wheat 

 plant, Maize ; this corn is indigenous to America, and is cultivated 

 with success in Italy, and various other parts of Europe : it has been 

 grown with partial success in the warmer parts of this country : but 

 the produce of its grain with reference to domestic purposes, is so in- 

 ferior to wheaten flour, as to render its cultivation here of little ralue. 



Oryza sativa, the Rice plant, produces the grain which, after under- 

 going certain operations, forms the principal food upon which vast mul- 

 titudes of the inhabitants in all parts of the eastern world are supported. 

 Large quantities of it are also annually imported into this country, and 

 applied to a variety of domestic purposes. It is from this grain that 

 the spirituous liquor called arrack is made. The cultivation of Rice 

 in those hot countries where it forms a staple commodity, is an ex- 

 ceedingly unhealthy occupation ; it is chiefly grown in gradually slo- 

 ping valleys, or upon plains, which are favourably situated for being 

 flooded either by means of the natural rivers, or from large artificial 

 tanks or reservoirs of water, which have been raised with immense 

 labour on the sides or across the valleys ; so that the fields are kept in 

 a constant swampy state during certain seasons of the year, which, 

 with the heat of the climate, greatly favours the production of malaria. 



It is a remarkable fact, that while ferns of the most delicate character 

 are (as we shall hereafter have occasion to notice more particularly) 

 found enveloped in the shale and other matters of the coal formation, 

 the cereal and pastoral grasses, which constitute so considerable a por- 

 tion of the vegetable covering of almost every region of the globe, have 

 not, it is believed, been noticed in a fossil state. The casts of plants 

 found in connexion with the coal are, it is true, for the most part ana- 

 lagous to those of tribes at present flourishing only in tropical climates, 

 where the smaller grasses, as above noticed, are much less common 

 than in temperate latitudes. In corroboration of the foregoing state- 

 ment, the authority of Messrs. Lindley and Hutton may be cited: 

 these competent observers assert, that " no trace of any glumaceous 

 plant has been met with, even in the latest Tertiary Rocks, although 

 we know that grasses now form a portion, and usually a very consider- 

 able one, of every Flora of the Worid, from New South Shetland to 

 Melville Island inclusive. It may indeed be conjectured, that before 

 the creation of herbiferous animals, grasses and sedges were not re- 

 quired, and therefore are not to be expected in any beds below the 

 Forest Marble and Stonesfield Slate ; but it is difiicult to conceive how 

 the animals of the upper Tertiary beds could have been fed, if grasses 

 had not then been present." — Fossil Flora, Preface, p. 13. It may, 



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