124 NATURE STUDY. 



lovers have uo use. The rational impressionist is nearer 

 to nature than the academic hack or the sensational color 

 splasher. The latter should go to Yellowstone Park. There 

 he will find himself beaten by nature ! 



From pure green, which may be taken as the type color 

 of the grass family, the shades and tints of the different 

 species approach on the one side the blues and on the other 

 side the yellows. Everyone has heard of Kentucky blue 

 grass and doubtless manj^ have wondered, as I once did, 

 what shade of blue it was and what sort of a tone it gave 

 to the landscape in the ''dark and bloody ground" of 

 American histoI;3^ Unfortunately, the term blue in this 

 case is a sad misnomer. I recollect how surprised and 

 disappointed I was when first I learned that this grass was 

 nothing more nor less than our common June grass, Poa 

 pratensis, and accordingly no bluer than that. But there 

 are grasses in which the tendency towards blue is evident. 

 The best example of this is the English or Canadian blue 

 grass, Poa compressa, a native of the old world, but now 

 thoroughly established here, and one of our commonest 

 species. A tuft of it growing amongst the ordinary green 

 grasses forms a bluish patch which is distinguishable al- 

 most as far as the ey& can see. Two other grasses with a 

 decidedly bluish aspect are blue-joint, Calamagrostis Cana- 

 de?isis, a tall, reed-like species growing in moist places, and 

 sheep's fescue, Festuca ovina, a low, densely tufted species 

 of dr}' ground, with narrow and innumerable basal leaves. 



On the other side of pure green come the numerous spe- 

 cies which exhibit more or less j^ellow in their coloring. 

 These are less striking than the blue grasses, for the ad- 

 mixture of yellow impresses us as being perfectly normal, 

 and the numberless j^ellowish greens appear to be only so 

 many tints of the green itself. 



All these variations from the type color are to be seen in 

 grasses when they are at their best as plants, that is, at the 



