224 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
ginseng, betel, paper, &c. As every climate has its peculiar produce, 
our natural wants bring on a mutual intercourse ; so that by means 
of trade each distant part is supplied with the growth of every 
latitude. But, without the knowledge of plants and their culture, 
we must have been content with our hips and haws, without 
enjoying the delicate fruits of India and the salutiferous drugs of 
Per. 
Instead of examining the minute distinctions of every various 
species of each obscure genus, the botanist should endeavour to 
make himself acquainted with those that are useful. You shall see 
a man readily ascertain every herb of the field, yet 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 
succulent and nutritive from the dry and juiceless. 
The study of grasses would be of great consequence to a 
northerly, and grazing kingdom. The botanist that could improve 
the sward of the district where he lived would be an 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.” 
I am, &c. 
