NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 187 



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 salutiferous drugs of Peru. 



Instead of examining the minute distinctions of every vari- 

 ous species of each obscure genus, the botanist should en- 

 deavor 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 neg- 

 lected ; neither the farmer nor the grazier seems 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 a 

 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 



1 Man seems to have a natural craving for fresh 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. G. C. D. 



LETTER XLI 



SELBORNE, July yd, 1778. 



DEAR SIR, In a district so diversified with such a variety 

 of hill and dale, aspects, and soils, it is no wonder that great 

 choice of plants should be found. Chalks, clays, sands, sheep- 

 walks and downs, bogs, heaths, wood-lands, and champaign 

 fields cannot but furnish an ample Flora. The deep rocky 



