;82 



NATURE 



{Dec. 20, 1888 



plant was only introduced into the Eastern Hemisphere 

 after the discovery of America, in which continent the 

 cactus is indigenous. Even if he be colour-blind, and the 

 petals of the blazing poppy show to him the same tone as 

 its sober sepals, yet he is still able to admire the beauty 

 of form, which conveys to him the history of the develop- 

 ment of the plant from its seed, and he would still be in 

 the position to give a discourse interesting to the unin- 

 itiated though intelligent observer ; and at the end of an 

 hour's conversation, in common with others, he would be 

 compelled to exclaim that there was still much in the life 

 of the plant of which he was utterly ignorant— so limitless 

 ai-e the subtle workings of Nature ! 



But what does the artist care for either of these views ? 

 He cares not for the fattening of stock. He feasts with 

 rapture on the different grays, greens, yellows, blues, and 

 reds, that are spread out before him, and on the delicate 

 tints and shadows cast by every passing cloud. He cares 

 not to know of the buttercups and daisies that grow there ; 

 it would even distress him to tell him that the yellow-greens 

 are groups of fescues, and the blue-greens patches of 

 cock's-foot and fox-tail. What is that to him ? He was 

 wondering what colour in his box would reproduce those 

 dehcate tones. He does not seek to know how much 

 corn to the acre that meadow would grow if ploughed up, 

 nor how much it might once have grown. To him it is 

 merely one endless feast of colour. 



Perchance more sordid ideas of another kind may occur 

 t-o hini. Apprehensions as to the hanging of his picture 

 may dispel his rapture in Nature's handiwork, and his mind 

 may be occupied with a fear lest the red ground of his 

 neighbour's picture will kill his own more delicate tones. 

 Poimds, shillings, and pence, the cares of a wife and 

 fatnily, are apt to destroy for a time the beauties of 

 Nature. 



How happy is the man who sketches and sketches only 

 to reproduce for himself these works of Nature ; whether 

 they be the meadows of England, dotted with short-horns 

 and Hampshire Downs,and bounded by the rook-sheltering 

 elm ; or the plain of Megiddo ; or the boundless prairie of 

 Manitoba. 



How differently again would the antiquary survey the 

 self-same scene ! His mind would revert to the people 

 who trod these plains in days of yore. Their history, 

 manners, customs, dress, and social habits, would open 

 out to him a wide field of speculation. On this very 

 pasture contending armies may once have trod, and the 

 ebbing life-blood of patriotic heroes once have flowed. 

 His eyes may be resting on a Bannockburn, or a Wor- 

 cester, or a spot where the Carthaginians of old strove 

 against the might of Rome, and were worsted in the 

 fight. Here the chariots of the Egyptians may have 

 rolled, or the devoted Aztecs have struggled hopelessly 

 against their Spanish conquerors. 



The contemplation of the plains produces in him yet 

 another train of thought. He conjures up an historical 

 novel or poem, but finds he has merely repeated the ideas 

 he has read before : he casts them aside and starts afresh ; 

 and still he envies the artist the ever-changing phases, 

 and the botanist the unsearchable workings, of Nature. 

 To him there are limits fixed and denned : his specula- 

 tions are restricted to the period of man's existence on 

 this globe,, but for the painter and botanist the range 

 and variety of subject are illimitable. 



Thus the pasture and the prairie grow up and die away, 

 containing, like most things in this world, their quota of 

 good and bad. Some weeds go unregarded ; the pernicious 

 effects of others become so prominent that they are 

 recognized at once and hated accordingly, like the grass 

 Cetichrus tn'bliloidcs, which bears a prickly fruit that winds 

 itself into the wool of the sheep, and renders the rearing 

 of sheep where it exists impossible ; while other plants, 

 such as clover, and the blue grass, arrest the attention of 

 even the careless agriculturist by their manifest merits. 



Now, to all, these herb-clothed portions of the earth 

 offer themselves in various phases according as the mind 

 is prepared to receive them ; and happy is he who can so 

 adjust his mind, and concentrate his thoughts upon the 

 phase required ; though so devious are the paths of 

 Nature that he will often travel far, and then, as a man 

 traversing a labyrinth, be checked by some such knotty 

 question as: " How does a plant obtain its nitrogen?" 

 and he will have to return to the post from which he 

 started. And such are the difficulties which have de- 

 terred those who have written on the formation of 

 pastures from going further on their course. They have 

 rested content with a description of the peculiarities of 

 each plant. 



But to him who tries, both as botanist and agriculturist, 

 to fathom the mysteries inseparable from a meadow, 

 whether in the New or the Old World, difficulties present 

 themselves " not in single spies but in battalions." Nature 

 alone supplies enough subjects for the closest study and 

 investigation : depth of soil, worms, showers, dews, 

 periods of drought, periods of wet, grubs, birds, — each 

 and all arrest the mind, and claim due considera- 

 tion. And when to these are added difficulties of 

 man's own providing, necessary though they be, the 

 solution seems to become a hopeless problem. Now no 

 longer is the battle of plants waged merely with the 

 weather and their other natural antagonists, as they may 

 be fitly called ; no longer is the struggle modified into the 

 simple solution of the survival of the fittest ; for the 

 farmer produces new enemies to pasture in the shape of 

 stock and the scythe, for cattle select the plants they like 

 best and leave the worst to seed, and the ruthless scythe 

 exposes the delicate stem to the heat of the sun. 



An opportune shower has preserved a field from the 

 pernicious effect of soft oat grass {Brovius mollis), by 

 thus rendering it palatable to stock, and so preventing its 

 seeding, while the want of rain has caused a meadow, 

 almost contiguous, to be impregnated with th's obnoxious 

 weed. 



The struggle of plant life is always waging in a pasture, 

 and unless the issue of the battle is directed by animals 

 or men, the most vigorous get the upper hand. 



Nature, with her customary and marvellous counter- 

 balancing characteristics, has foreseen this possibility and 

 provided against it, for in a wet season stoloniferous 

 grasses (whose travelling shoots have then the power of 

 sending innumerable roots into the ground, each to 

 become a parent plant) cover the ground to such an 

 extent that the superficial observer is tempted to declare 

 that the meadow which he views is entirely composed of 

 creeping grasses. On the other hand, in a dry season, 

 deep-rooted plants such as tall fescue {Festuca elatior) 

 gain the mastery and apparently oust their opponents. 

 The vigorous grasses characterized by an underground 

 growth, such as fox-tail (Alopeciiries pratensis),3.x\d which 

 are amply provided for by Nature in respect of hardihood 

 when growing, are scanty seed-bearers ; and even when 

 they do perfect their seeds, so small is the store of food 

 contained in them, compared with their immediate neigh- 

 bours, that a large percentage of them germinate only 

 to wither away. Rye-grass and the smaller dog's-tail 

 {Cyiiosurus cris(aius), deprived of other means of repro- 

 ducing their species and fostering them, bear seeds that 

 are eminently qualified to reproduce themselves. 



Let him, therefore, who essays to unravel the mysteries 

 of our green meadows remember to cultivate to the 

 acutest degree the faculty of ocular observation, for 



" Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem 

 Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, et qure 

 Ipse sibi tradit spectator." 



Let him also learn to employ and utilize the intelligence 

 of others ; and above all let him not be surprised if, after 

 much patient study and investigation, his heart sinks 



