96 



FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



Many of our common grasses will well repay investi- 

 gation, and there are few things of this sort that are 

 more easily preserved. The collection of dried flowers 

 is often but a sorry substitute for the plants in all 

 their living beauty, as the necessary flattening out destroys 

 much of the charm of the growth, while the colours 

 that were in nature so beautiful, in too many cases 

 become sadly dulled. The difference between the real 

 growth and its mortal remains is too suggestive of the 

 contrast between life and death to be agreeable, the 

 forms are a mere mockery of the past; but grasses 

 more readily adapt themselves to these altered condi- 

 tions, for flatness is not so fatal to their grace, nor 

 have they the brilliancy of colour that we find in 

 flowers, while there is a certain dry and tough quality 

 about them that, as contrasted with the succulence of 

 many vegetable growths, is a still further advantage. 

 Should our readers commence the collection of grasses, 

 they will, we are sure, rapidly find the pursuit an 

 interesting one, and they will probably have little idea 

 until they actually submit the matter to this practical 

 test of experience how great a number of grasses may 

 in almost any district be found, or how varied they are 

 in form and character. 



