XI. 



THE FLOWERING OF THE GRASSES. 



THE big dry logs beside the path in Holme Bush 

 Fields make a pleasant seat in wet weather ; though why 

 the Squire has let them lie here so long it would be 

 hard to say ; for they are fine solid trunks of good 

 timber, and now they are beginning to rot on the under- 

 side, and to put forth beautiful patches of bright orange 

 fungus at the scars of the main branches. Around them, 

 the grass is growing tall and luxuriant, as it always does 

 beside fallen wood ; and most of the heads are now 

 coming into their first bloom, with the little quivering 

 and shivering stamens trembling like aspen leaves before 

 the faintest breath of wind. These smooth, round cylin- 

 drical mops, soft and hairy like a fox's brush, are the 

 meadow foxtails ; these slender waving panicles, much 

 branched and subdivided, with a faint purplish blush upon 

 their tiny flowers, are the common field-grass, the most 

 ordinary element of all our English pastures ; these 

 larger, broader, flatter, and more turgid heads, fiercely 

 bearded, and standing out square to the breeze, are 

 haulms of brome ; and these single stiff, lance-like 

 spikes, with dark-brown scales between the florets, are 

 sweet vernal grass, the plant that, a little later, imparts 

 its familiar and delicious perfume to new-mown hay. 

 You can pick a dozen kinds without stirring as you sit 

 on the logs here. There are people who only know all 

 these infinite varieties that go to make up the greensward 

 of England as grass. But they are not grass, they are 



