Grass 



Rice, wheat, oats, Indian corn (not to speak of barley) 

 are essential to man's existence. Each might perhaps 

 be said to support a particular kind of man, and perhaps 

 to be responsible for some of his characteristics. 



The Hindu, Fellahin, Malagasy, or Chinese paddy- 

 field means long monotonous dabbling with loathsome 

 mud in a hot and moist climate, and does perhaps 

 really produce a mild, not very brave, industrious dis- 

 position very different from that of the northern oats, 

 of which only a small crop can be wrested by incessant 

 fighting with a stubborn soil in a climate which very 

 few can love and none praise, at least honestly. 



Even the Zulu and Kaffir, nourished on milk and 

 maize, with perhaps a little millet, differ entirely from 

 rice-fed Asiatics. But we cannot here enter into these 

 abstruse questions. 



An order so widely distributed and so various in its 

 demands for rain, warmth, and sunshine must be re- 

 markable for something particularly ingenious and 

 efficient in its outfit. 



The grasses are in fact very different from all other 

 orders, and only show a very distant relationship to the 

 Cyperaceae. 



Perhaps the most characteristic point about them is 

 the manner in which the young growing stem is pro- 

 tected. When the corn has germinated in early summer, 

 it remains for quite a long time with only the leaf-tips 

 projecting above the earth. The young stem and future 

 ear are buried and enclosed in a series, one within the 

 other, of cylindrical sheathing leaf-bases. These "nests" 

 of enveloping leaf sheaths are extremely efficient. They 

 are thin, tough, and hard, and completely enclose the 

 young bud ; being bad conductors of heat or cold, and 

 full of flinty secretions, they also protect it from changes 

 in temperature, from drought, and from insects. 



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