4 THE MEADOW. 



Poppies, there is nothing to be seen but grass. By 

 the term grass, farmers mean all plants which serve 

 as pasture to cattle, or may be converted into hay, 

 or, more accurately, all plants with comparatively 

 small leaves growing in pasture land. Botanists, 

 however, comprehend under the term those plants 

 only which bear long and narrow leaves, jointed 

 stems, and seeds more or less resembling grains of 

 barley or wheat. 



Of all vegetable productions the various kinds 

 of grass are, in temperate climates, at once the most 

 generally diffused, and the most important. The 

 different kinds of grass to which the common name 

 of corn is given furnish man and several domestic 

 animals with their principal food; other sorts, 

 which abound in our pasture-lands, afford, in their 

 green state during the spring and summer months, 

 and in the form of hay during winter, an inexhaus- 

 tible supply of sustenance to cattle ; while the 

 stems or straw of the larger kinds, namely, wheat, 

 barley, and oats, are applied to a number of useful 

 purposes, which I need not mention. 



In order, therefore, that there may not be want- 

 ing a sufficient supply of so valuable a production, 

 the Providence of God has so constituted their 

 nature that they are less liable than any plants with 

 which we are acquainted to become extinct, and 

 less affected by any excess of heat or cold, drought 

 or moisture. Their leaves are, as I have said, long 

 and narrow, and of the same width from the base 

 upwards to nearly the extreme point. Hence it 

 happens, that whenever rain or dew settles on 

 them, it does not drop off, but is conducted as 

 through a channel to the roots. The leaves too, 

 when they have executed their office of supplying 



