84 WORCESTER COUNTY HOETJCULTURAL SOCIETY. [1895. 



Mississippi valley, the pampas of South America, the steppes of 

 Europe and Asia and the similar lauds of Africa and Australia. 



No other family has greater economic value. Through centuries of 

 cultivation, some of them have been developed into the staple food- 

 plants of the world. The teeming millions of southeastern Asia 

 cannot starve so long as the sugar-cane, rice aud bamboo flourish ; 

 nor the teeming millions of P^urope or Araeiica so long as the earth 

 brings forth its bountiful harvests of wheat, corn, rye, oats, barley 

 and fodder grasses. 



Most of the cultivated grasses are natives of the Old World, but 

 are widely scattered over the New. The New World in return, has 

 given some gifts to the Old, the greatest of which is maize. Culti- 

 vated in the United States, over nearly 80,000,000 acres, it is the 

 largest arable crop grown in any country, the crop of a single year iu 

 measured quantity exceeding the entire wheat crop of the whole world. 

 What more fitting floral emblem for the great Republic than this 

 kingly plant whose grain is of the color of gold, which is grown to 

 some extent, in every State and Territory in our Union, and in 

 almost every county in which agriculture is carried on ! The grass 

 family is probably the most widely diffused over all the habitable 

 parts of the globe, reaching the outposts of flowering plants, both 

 in the polar regions and near the snow-line on high mountains. 

 About 3,500 species have been already discovered and described, of 

 which about 700 are found in the United States, and 80 in our 

 Worcester County. In the early history of this country, particularly 

 in the northern States, while the settlements were scattered, the native 

 grasses and tlie natural pasturage were sufficient for the needs 

 of the population. Afterwaids, grasses well adapted for culti- 

 vation were imported from the mother country, and now cover large 

 areas. Nearly a thiid of our grasses have been introduced, some by 

 design, some by accident; all are naturalized. The humbler grasses 

 may be proud of their noble kinship and of their family reputation. 

 There are few weeds among the grasses. Some of the grasses 

 are valued for ornament. 



Quaking-grass, Briza media, L., with its showy drooping spikelets 

 on delicate pedicels, is an ornament to many an upland meadow ; oat- 

 grass pleases with its slender drooping panicle ; velvet grass attracts 

 attention by its pale color and soft downy ai)pearance, and Brachyely- 

 trum ari.'<tatum, which has no common name that I know, probably 

 because it is native and largely unob.served by the common people, 

 who give common things a common name, will long help to decorate 

 the margin of rocky woods. 



