34 GLUMACEA 
in consequence of the small size of the spikelets, require examination with 
the microscope. 
The term “grass,” as employed by agriculturists, frequently has a far 
more extensive signification than that to which it is limited by the botanist, 
being applied to clover (called “three-leaf grass”), plantain, sorrel, and many 
other flowering plants, which ordinarily form a constituent part of a hay 
crop. ‘This use of the word may be very convenient to those who, in their 
intercourse with each other, require some such comprehensive term which 
may include grasses and other plants fit for forming good pasture-land, or 
for being converted into hay; but the naturalist understands by “ grass,” 
such plants only as fall under the description given below of the GRAMINE&, 
a natural order of the sub-class GLUMACE&. To this division it is altogether 
improbable that the botanist, however elementary may be his knowledge, 
will assign any of the plants described in the preceding volumes ; yet it is 
by no means so certain that the young student may not confound with the 
grasses other members of the Glumaceous Tribe belonging to the CYPERACE, 
or Sedges ; for these resemble the grasses so closely in their more obvious 
characters, that it requires a somewhat practised eye to discriminate them. 
The points in which the two natural orders agree are these :—the leaves 
are long, narrow, often channelled above, and pointed ; they proceed mainly 
from the root, and grow in tufts: in both, the flowers are destitute of petals, 
being composed of scales or glumes, and are elevated on a straw-like stem, 
where they form terminal spikelets or heads, which are either erect or 
drooping. The characters in which the Sedges obviously differ from the 
Grasses are, that in the former the leaves are generally rigid and more or less 
of a sea-green or glaucous hue; the flower-stem is angular instead of round, 
solid or pithy, and not hollow, and not jointed at the point from which a 
stem-leaf arises; and in those cases in which the stem-leaf is furnished with 
a sheathing base, that sheath is never split. The separation of the two orders 
is therefore so clearly a natural one, that a practised eye can at once decide 
to which of the two divisions any given specimen should be referred, no 
matter what may be its stage of growth—and that without minutely examin- 
ing that part (the inflorescence, namely) on which the distinction is in reality 
founded. : 
Not only in outward appearance, but in properties also, the sedges differ 
from the grasses. Growing often side by side, on dry heaths, in marshes, 
meadows, woods, on mountain tops, or on the sandy sea-shore, the grasses 
abound in starch and sugar, substances highly conducive to the nutriment of 
cattle ; the sedges are remarkably deficient in them, and do not rank as 
“crass,” even in the agricultural sense of the term; so that while the 
Glumacez comprise nearly all the plants which in the temperate regions are 
essential to man and the animals that he has domesticated, the Cyperacez 
are “weeds,” unprofitable for food—and very frequently, like tares among 
wheat, appropriating soil and nourishment, which but for them would afford 
space and nurture for their more valuable neighbours. They must not, how- 
ever, be denounced as utterly useless, nor are they even all to be classed with 
the “thorns and thistles”—which, in accordance with the primeval curse, 
conveyed by implication a blessing on industry ; the roots of several species 
