HAT is to be said of the Grasses, 
the commonest plants of all that 
grow, that are daily trodden 
under foot, and that everybody 
knows are uninteresting except 
as the material of which tennis- 
courts, cricket-pitches, and golf-links are made? The 
difficulty is really to construct a few brief paragraphs 
that shall give some general idea of the family so 
far as it is represented by the hundred and twenty 
species that occur in these islands. Over three 
thousand species are known from all parts of the 
world, and so greatly do these differ among them- 
selves, though agreeing in all the principal points 
of structure, that the family has had to be divided 
into about three hundred genera, and these in turn 
grouped in tribes, and the tribes marshalled into 
series. Our own six-score of species represent no less 
than forty-eight genera. Although the Grasses are 
common to all climates and all parts of the globe, it 
is only in Temperate regions that they form continuous 
346 
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San Ss 
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SSW 
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ay 
\ NS 
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