120 TYPES OF BRITISH PLANTS 
monocotyledons for its identity. The seed, of course, 
would give certainty, but one does not always find the 
seed with the plant, and, even when found, its dissection 
is a work of some delicacy. Beside the mere incident of 
jossessing only one cotyledon, however, the seed possesses - 
] oO y > > 
something of much more importance to us, and that is 
a very large reserve store of nutriment for the young 
plant in the shape of albumen, which happens also to be 
eminently suitable nourishment for ourselves. In the . 
Dicotyledons this nourishment is usually taken up into 
the embryo before the seed leaves the parent plant, but 
in this group we find it at our own disposal. 
A moment’s thought will show the vast importance of 
this peculiarity, which is especially prominent in the 
Grass group now under consideration. At first sight one 
is inclined to neglect the grasses, so common are they and 
so very much alike. But when you think for a little on 
the number of folks that eat rye or wheaten bread, of 
the vast consumption. of maize, of the fact that nearly 
half the population of the world makes its staple food 
of rice, another grass-seed, and that the sugar-cane is a 
big grass, you will agree that the family, if not exciting, 
is extremely useful. 
Not only for our ordinary food, but for most of our 
ordinary English pleasures, we depend on grasses. With- 
out them we should be robbed of cricket and football 
fields, of tennis lawns and bowling greens (for asphalte 
is but a poor substitute for the springy turf), and the 
hunting man would lose three-quarters of his joy. 
Another virtue of the grass is the way in which it 
prepares the ground for other plants. For instance, on 
the east coast of Norfolk, upon the shifting sand hills 
that fringe the sea, and seem likely not to be able to 
are 
