OF SELBORNE. 259 
hardly know wheat from barley, or, at least, one 
sort of wheat or barley from another. 
But, of all sorts of vegetation, the grasses seem 
to be most neglected; neither the farmer nor the 
grazier seem to distinguish the annual from the 
perennial, the hardy from the tender, nor the suc- 
culent and nutritive from the dry and juiceless. 
The study of grasses would be of great conse- 
quence to a northerly and grazing kingdom. The 
botanist that could improve the sward of the dis- 
trict where he lived would be a useful member of 
society : to raise a thick turf on a naked soil would 
be worth volumes of systematic knowledge ; and 
he would be the best commonwealth’s man that 
could occasion the growth of “two blades of grass 
where one alone was seen before.” 
LETTER XXXVII. 
Selborne, July 3, 1778. 
DeEaR Sir,—In a district so diversified with such 
a variety of hill and dale, aspects and soils, it is no 
wonder that great choice of plants should be found. 
Chalks, clays, sands, sheepwalks and downs, bogs, 
heaths, woodlands, and champaign fields, cannot 
but furnish an ample flora. The deep rocky lanes 
abound with filices, and the pastures and moist 
woods with fungi. If in any branch of botany we 
may seem to be wanting, it must be in the large 
aquatic plants, which are not to be expected ona 
spot far removed from rivers, and lying up amid 
the hill-country at the springheads. To enumer- 
ate all the plants that have been discovered within 
