CHAPTER XXIII 

 GRASS 



OF all plants there are perhaps none so full of interest 

 and so wonderfully designed as the great grass family. 



It is quite a cosmopolitan order, varying in the most 

 remarkable way to suit the exigencies of almost every 

 climate in the world. The tree-like grasses such as 

 bamboos, and the like, force themselves on one's notice 

 everywhere in or near the tropics. The beauty of a great 

 feathery, gracefully-drooping bamboo clump cannot be 

 overlooked. In Chili one may have to hew one's way at 

 the rate of fifty yards an hour through the Chusquiea, 

 another climbing grass, which winds round tall trees and 

 hangs in graceful folds in amongst the foliage everywhere. 



Near the top of Ruwenzori it takes nearly a day to 

 pass through the bamboo zone ; generally dark, damp, 

 dripping, and miserable, and where the ground is covered 

 by viciously stinging nettle-like plants. 



There are other weird grasses growing over many 

 stretches of the Australian bushes into which no sheep 

 are ever allowed to go on account of the long spiny 

 tips of their fruits, which work themselves into the wool. 

 They even pierce the skin and sometimes kill the sheep, 

 but of course its fleece is so matted and torn and 

 penetrated by the wiry winding threads that it is of no 

 value whatever. But grasses of this morose, solitary 

 and wicked disposition are very unusual. The vast 

 majority of them are exceedingly benignant ; indeed 

 it is they who make possible all sorts of civilisation, 

 for they constitute by far the larger part of the food of 

 mankind and also of his dependent domestic animals. 



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