180 WILD FLOWERS. 



delicacy ; and a decoction of its leaves furnishes 

 him with a medicine. The large stems are 

 used for baskets and pipes. Its leaves are 

 made into fans and coverings for roofs ; and 

 from the plant, in various ways, are procured 

 paper, writing-pens, furniture for houses, and 

 every variety of domestic implements. 



It is a circumstance worthy of remark, in 

 our meadow grasses, that they possess the same 

 properties for food as those vihich we cultivate 

 in our corn-fields. The smaller size of the seeds 

 renders them unsuitable for culture ; or bread, 

 or malt, might be made from seeds of tlie com- 

 mon grass. There is, indeed, a great similarity 

 in all the plants of the grass tribe. Every one 

 of them contains sugar, and each one has on 

 its stem a coat of flint. After the burning of 

 a hay-stack, pieces of glass have been found 

 lying on the ground around it, which the fusing 

 properties of fire have converted from flint to 

 this substance. The straw of barley is said, 

 by professor Lindley, to be melted by fire into 

 a glass of a topaz yellow colour ; and a wheat 

 straw is stated to furnish a colourless glass, 

 when fused by a common blow-pipe. One grass 

 only is deleterious. The darnel, {Lolium temu- 

 lentum,) when mingled with flour, is unwhole- 

 some ; but Lindley considers that its injurious 

 effects may have been greatly exaggerated. 



That singular flower, the meadow safl'ron, 

 {Colchicum autumnaJe,) may be found both in 

 this monih and in October. It is a purple 

 blossom, in shape resembling the common 



