NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 229 



that by means of trade each distinct part is supplied with the 

 growth of every latitude. But, without the knowledge of plants 

 and their culture, we must have been content with our hips and 

 haws, without enjoying the delicate fruits of India and the saluti- 

 ferous drugs of Peru. 



Instead of examining the minute distinctions of every various 

 species of each obscure genus, the botanist should endeavour to 

 make himself acquainted with those that are useful. You shall 

 see a man readily ascertain every herb of the field, yet hardly 

 know wheat from barley, or at least one sort of wheat or barley 

 from another. 



But of all sorts of vegetation the grasses seem to be most 

 neglected ; neither the farmer nor the grazier seem to distinguish 

 the annual from the perennial, the hardy from the tender, nor the 

 succulent and nutritive from the dry and juiceless. 



The study of grasses would be of great consequence to a 

 northerly, and grazing kingdom. The botanist that could im- 

 prove the sward of the district where he lived would be an useful 

 member of society : to raise a thick turf on a naked soil would 

 be worth volumes of systematic knowledge ; and he would be 

 the best commonwealth's man that could occasion the growth 

 of " two blades of grass where one alone was seen before." 



I am, etc. 



NOTE TO LETTER XL. 



1 Man seems to have a natural craving for flesh meat, and in some parts of 

 Africa where vegetable food is in plenty and even luxuriance, but animal food 

 is not so easily obtained, the desire to eat flesh causes cannibalism. It is not 

 hunger, because hunger could be satisfied by vegetable food, but an irresistible 

 craving for meat. The same cause may first have given rise to the odious 

 custom in some of the South Sea Islands. 



