1] ORIGIN OF THE WORD GRASS 5) 
small modicum of truth in such sayings as “All flesh is 
grass,” and that the man who can make two blades of 
grass grow where one grew before deserves well of his 
country, obtains a larger significance when it is realised 
that the only real gain of wealth is that represented by 
the storage of energy from without which comes to us by 
the action of green leaves waving in the sunshine. 
The true Grasses, comprising the Natural Order 
Graminaceze—also written Gramineze—are often popularly 
confounded with other herbs which possess narrow green 
ribbon-like leaves, or even with plants of very different 
aspects—e.y. Cotton-grass (Hriophorum) and other Sedges, 
and the names Rib-grass (Plantago), Knot-grass (Poly- 
gonum), Scorpion-grass (Myosotis) and Sea-grass (Zostera), 
as well as the general usage of the word grass to signify 
all kinds of leguminous and other hay-plants in agri- 
culture, point to the wider use of the word in former 
times. This has been explained by the use of the words 
gaers, gres, gyrs, and grass in the old herbals to indicate 
any kind of small herbage. 
In view of the importance of our British grasses in 
agriculture, I have here put together some results of 
observation and reading in the hope that they may aid 
students in recognising easily our ordinary agricultural 
and wild grasses. During several years of work in the 
fields, principally directed at first to the study of the 
parasitic fungi on grasses, and subsequently to that of the 
importance of grasses in forestry and agriculture, and to 
the variations they exhibit, the need of some guide to 
the identification of a grass at any time of the year, 
1—2 
