148 WILD FLOWEH8 OF STJMMEE. 



group of grasses. A higher taste is now spreading. 

 The lordly Pampas Grass waves its pennons on our 

 lawns, and the variegated Ribbon Grass finds a place 

 in many a garden, and the Hare's-tail, Panic, and 

 Quaking Grasses, alternate with flowers in the gay 

 parterre. 



Let us cull a few specimens of this much-neglected 

 tribe of plants, as we sit with the soft flowing river mur- 

 muring onward, and reflecting our grassy friends on 

 its silvery surface. The common grass is the simplest 

 form of a perfect plant. From its tufty fibrous root 

 there shoots a slender stem, clothed with long and 

 narrow alternate leaves. Along these leaves the veins 

 run side by side from one end to the other. In the 

 true grasses the stems are round and hollow, and the 

 sheaths of the leaves open on one side. They range 

 in height from two inches, as in the Sand Cat's-tail, to 

 eighty feet in the lordly Bamboo. In the Sedge tribe, 

 however, the cylindrical form is absent, and the stem 

 is angular and solid, but the leaf-sheatas form perfect 

 cylinders. The highest leaf on the stem of the grass 

 acts as a cradle for the young buds, until they are 

 sufliciently formed to emerge into the open day. In 

 the sedges, the male and female parts of the flower, 



