THE FLOWERING OF THE GRASSES. 61 



grasses. In Britain alone we have no fewer than a hun- 

 dred and one species, without counting some seventy 

 sedges which nobody but a botanist would ever think of 

 discriminating from them. They are all really as much 

 unlike one another, when you come to look into them, 

 as a wild strawberry is unlike a dog-rose ; yet even 

 countrymen and farmers make little distinction between 

 them, and not more than a dozen or so have real popular 

 English names such as fescue, matweed, wild oats, 

 cordgrass, darnel, and wagging bennets. A few are 

 troublesome weeds, like couchgrass ; a few others are 

 valuable fodder, like timothy ; and these have naturally 

 acquired names from the cultivators who befriend or ex- 

 terminate them ; while a few more are striking enough 

 to attract attention by their prettiness, like quakegrass, 

 tares, or nard ; and these have sometimes been quaintly 

 and prettily dubbed with Bible names by village chil- 

 dren. But by far the greater number are too inconspic- 

 uous ever to have reached the dignity of any nomencla- 

 ture whatsoever till the systematists took them in hand 

 and divided them all artificially into different genera and 

 species. Even the larger groups number in Britain 

 forty-two. 



Grasses have very degenerate flowers, almost more so 

 than those of any other known family of plants ; and yet 

 even here we can still dimly trace some vague picture of 

 their earlier pedigree in their present degraded condition. 

 It is a great mistake to suppose that evolution is neces- 

 sarily always upward. On the whole, there is continuous 

 progress ; but there is much retrogression, too, in particu- 

 lar cases. I take a head of meadow brome, and pull its 

 panicle to pieces. It is made up of several little flower- 

 ing branches, each covered with tiny green or brownish 

 flowers. Why green ? Because the grasses are wind- 



