AMONG THE GRASSES 133 



sense of the word, which, from want of the proper pleasure 

 in a lawn, the French have altered till it stands for 

 an urban street. The lawn grass is as good for food as 

 for tired eyes. A horse would agree in regard to this form 

 of food that the nearer the bone the sweeter the meat. It is 

 the short grass that is richest and most juicy. The bent, 

 which is the stem that carries a seed-head, is not comparable 

 with the green blade. But the bents have a beauty that 

 rivals even garden flowers, and the flower-heads which paint 

 the surface of a hay-field compass as many rich and delicate 

 shades as the feathers of a pheasant. Perhaps the worst 

 meadows in the farmer's eyes are the loveliest. Over all the 

 face of the country is no more delicate effect of colour than 

 a slanting light through the ruddy, tawny heads of dock and 

 sorrel which flourish most in the sourest soil. For a com- 

 parison you would have to go to the sunset sky. As if the 

 two had some natural affinity the great moon daisies often 

 grow along with these feather-heads, and as the sun sinks 

 one summer evening the colour of the hay-field shifts from a 

 luminous red or cinnabar into a dull purple and then into 

 a net of stars. The less the light the more the moon 

 daisies come out into prominence, and the more the tints of 

 the bents disappear or merge into a monochrome. 



Of all summer bouquets the village children pluck none 

 is more fine and delicate in form or colour than the bunches 

 of hay-field grasses. They are composed, one may say, 

 of mingled flower and fruit. The ' totter-grass ' vernacular 

 in the Midlands for the commoner form quaking-grass is one 

 of the prizes. Its flower and seed-heads keep up the ruddy 

 colour of the docks and sorrel, and its perpetual movement 

 gives the bouquet at the field the shimmer that keeps the colours 

 shifting in the lightest breeze. But if you look close, and 

 pay such attention to each grass as you would pay to a flower, 



