no NATURE STUDY. 



rice. Other millions subsist on species of sorglium. The 

 grasses, then, constitute beyond question that family of 

 plants which is absolutely indispensable to the welfare of 

 mankind and which is accordingly the most important of all. 



Come to think of it, setting aside the economic value of 

 the grass family, what .sort of a world would this be with- 

 out grasses ? To begin at home, we should have no lawns, 

 except such as might be made up of chickweeds and speed- 

 wells and creeping buttercups and daisies and dandelions 

 and plantains and such like assertive but unsatisfactory 

 substitutes. Out in the country there would be no past- 

 ures nor fields of grain to delight the eye throughout the 

 season with varying greens and golden browns. There 

 would be no grazing ground, except such as might be sup- 

 plied in meadow land by sour or harsh members of the sedge 

 and rush families; consequently the flocks and herds, if there 

 were any, would be ill fed, ill bred and unsightly. If we 

 desired to turn out of the beaten path our feet would sink 

 in the turfless soil as they now do when we plod our weary 

 way over a ploughed field. It would not be our world at 

 all, but a world much less comfortable and much less beau- 

 tiful. 



To turn for a moment from present aspects to consid- 

 erations of the past ; what would our world have been 

 without grasses ? Civilization could not have reached its 

 present stage but for that pastoral era which ushered in the 

 patriarchal system and perfected the institution of the fam- 

 ily. 



Finally, the loss to literature would have been incalcula- 

 ble. The piping of shepherds, the loves of Phyllis and 

 Corydon, the song of Hebrew bard celebrating the " cattle 

 upon a thousand hills," all these rich and sweet materials 

 of literary art would have been missed. Even the Twenty 

 Third Psalm, that most perfect idyl of sacred writ, could 

 not have been conceived. " He maketh me to lie down in 



