Grasses 347 
lawns and pastures. We cannot boast of giant 
Grasses in the shape of Bamboos sixty or seventy 
feet high, and nothing larger than the Great 
Reed (Phragmites communis), yet we have in our 
smaller native species a beautiful and _ perennial 
green mantling of hill and valley, whose nutri- 
tious herbage is indirectly of the highest value 
to a flesh-eating race, apart from its esthetic 
importance. 
The roots of Grasses are always fibrous, and they 
take hold of the soil so completely that they bind it 
into a matted turf; some of the species have also 
creeping stems which run just below or just above 
the surface, rooting as they go, so that in a well- 
established pasture there is no part of the surface soil 
that is not in almost immediate contact with root or 
stem of grass. 
Where the Marraw, or Sea Reed (Ammophila 
arundinacea), grows upon our shores, it often does 
good service, its great, fleshy, creeping stems holding 
the sand together, and not only building up by this 
means a barrier against the force of the waves, but 
also preventing the sand from being blown farther 
inland to do damage. It is said that the town of 
Hull is indebted to this grass for its continued exist- 
ence, otherwise threatened by the encroachments of 
the sea—Marraw having given strength and solidity 
to the sandbank known as Spurn Point. In the 
Hebrides and on the French coast also the plant 
has been actually planted on sandy shores for the 
purpose of reclaiming level tracts from the sea. 
So well has this valuable character of the Marraw 
been appreciated, that in our own country its de- 
