GRASSES. 125 
tion, which supplies us mainly with fleshy food. The study of these 
inestimably precious gifts to mankind must ever be one of the 
utmost significance. All cereals are graminous, whether Wheat 
or Rye, whether Barley or Oats, ripening in colder zones, whether 
Maize or Rice, which prosper in more genial climes. We little 
think, when daily relishing sugar as a now indespensable requisite 
of life, that the uncomparable Cane is a grass, which within the 
girdles of the tropics cannot be superseded by the Beet. The 
verdure, on which our eyes daily rest, is far more extensively 
constituted by these mostly humble plants, than even by the 
spacious and expansive trees of the forests. In this little work, 
specially written for Australian youths, it has been endeavoured 
throughout to choose only native plants for exemplification ; but 
from the vast assemblage of our grasses, even some hundred species 
indigenous to Australia, but very few can be considered within 
the scope of these pages. Rich as our continent is in Graminez 
it remains a memorable fact, that scarcely any Bamboos occur 
anywhere within its limits, while in our mere crossing the narrow 
straits of the ocean, which separate Australia from the Indian 
islands and the Asiatic continent, these magnific towering forms 
of vegetation are at once in manifold forms brought before us. 
Hveryone is acquainted with our Kangaroo-grass (Anthistiria cili- 
ata), long known before Australia became colonized, in South 
Asia and all Africa. Why the younger Linné should have con- 
nected the flower-festival of Bacchus with this plant, if really the 
name was changed from Anthesteria, is difficult to conceive. 
If any of the little clusters of florets of a Kangaroo-grass are 
dissected, it will be found of a complex structure ; four sessile 
staminate or empty florets surround a bisexual flower, besides two 
stalked staminate florets being placed with them additionally ; 
then the outer bract of the bisexual flower is terminated by a long 
bristle or awn, to which in scientific language the name arista is 
applied, an expression used in this sense already by Cicero. In 
the species of Poa or Meadow-grass, Festuca or Fesewe and Bromus 
or Brome-grass, which genera all are pertaining to our native flora, 
the structure of the flowers is simple, each spikelet consisting of 
two rows of florets, arranged like those of a Cyperus. The Desert 
