GRASS TIRBE 63 
Painted Grass, or Ladies’ Laces, and that it had “long ago been respected 
and cherished in the country gardens of many gentlewomen.” 
6. (19) SEA-REED (Amméphila). 
1. Common Sea-reed (A. arundindcea).—Panicle close, cylindrical, 
tapering ; empty glumes acute, hairs one-third the length of glume ; root- 
stock stout, creeping, and perennial. This is the common Marum, Marram, 
or Matweed of our sea-shores, and one of the most useful plants on the wide, 
dreary, sandy flats so often seen there. It often grows in large masses, its 
numerous and strong roots, sometimes twenty feet long, serving to hold 
down those drifting sands, which else might rise in overwhelming heaps to 
desolate the neighbourhood, and which would prove as injurious as an over- 
flow of ocean itself. Stillingfleet recommended that this grass should be 
sown on such sandy banks as were without it, and it has been extensively 
planted in Norfolk, and is carefully grown in Holland. Were it not for this 
plant and its allies, the Lyme-grass and the rough Sea-sedge, many parts of 
our coast would be exposed to the most alarming incursions of sand. It is 
not alone in countries like Egypt, where vast regions of sand prevail, that 
immense tracts of land have been covered by its inundations. Several 
instances have occurred in this kingdom of injuries done by them, as in the 
well-known one of the estate of Coubin, near Forres, in Scotland, where, in 
1769, the encroachments of drifting sand had, in one season, completely 
buried this valuable property, so that only the upper part of an apple-tree 
was left visible. This calamity was caused entirely by the poor in the neigh- 
bourhood having pulled up the grass for household uses. In the reign of 
Queen Elizabeth an Act was passed to restrain this practice, and commanding 
that the growth of this Mat-grass should be encouraged. It has been planted 
_in the Hebrides for preventing sand-drift, and its abundant growth on the 
large sand-bank called Spurn Point is considered to have been the means of 
saving the town of Hull from having been washed away by the sea. Spurn 
Point, originally a drifting sand, has been rendered firm in the course of 
years by successive growths of this bent ; and on this sandy mass the ocean 
pours the violence of its first swell before it reaches the town. The sand-hills 
about Calais are. held down in a similar way by a plentiful growth of this 
plant. 
This Sea-reed is abundant on many loose sandy shores of these islands ; 
its stem is three or four feet high, and its close panicle, tapering at both 
ends, is, in July, three or four inches in length. The foliage, which is very 
long, rigid, and of a sea-green tint, has not so bluish a hue as that other use- 
ful sand-plant, the Lyme-grass. Its creeping roots have little tubers like beads 
at the joints. This plant is never found on inland soils, and when by a 
succession of growths its masses have formed by their tough roots a firmer 
soil, the grass disappears. It has performed its service in the economy of 
nature, has bound the once shifting sands, and it gives way to plants of 
another character. Its coarse hard foliage is not relished by cattle, hence 
it is not cropped, and its tall, greenish, straw-coloured, stiff stalks rustle to 
the winds of autumn, unless the poor people in the neighbourhood gather 
them for weaving into mats, or binding them into ropes for rustic uses. In 
