198 The Natural History 



Instead of examining the minute distinctions of every 

 various species of each obscure genus, the botanist should 

 endeavour to make himself acquainted with those that 

 are useful. You shall see a man readily ascertain every 

 herb of the field, yet hardly know wheat from barley, or 

 at least one sort of wheat or barley from another. 



But of all sorts of vegetation the grasses seem to be 

 most neglected ; neither the farmer nor the grazier seem 

 to distinguish the annual from the perennial, the hardy 

 from the tender, nor the succulent and nutritive from the 

 dry and juiceless. 



The study of grasses would be of great consequence to 

 a northerly, and grazing kingdom. The botanist that 

 could improve the sward of the district where he lived 

 would be an useful member of society ; to raise a thick 

 turf on a naked soil would be worth volumes of systematic 

 knowledge ; and he would be the best commonwealth's 

 man that could occasion the growth of " two blades of 

 grass where one alone was seen before." 



I am, etc. 



LETTER XLI 



TO THE IIONOURAbLE DAINES HARRINGTON 



Selborne, July 3, 1778. 



Dear Sir, 

 In a district so diversified with such a variety of hill and 

 dale, aspects, and soils, it is no wonder that great choice 

 of plants should be found. Chalks, clays, sands, sheep- 

 walks and downs, bogs, heaths, woodlands, and champaign 

 fields, cannot but furnish an ample flora. The deep 

 rocky lanes abound with filices^ and the pastures and 

 moist woods \\\i\\fu?igi. If in any branch of botany we 

 may seem to be wanting, it must be in the large aquatic 

 plants, which are not to be expected on a spot far removed 

 from rivers, and lying up amidst the hill country at the 

 spring heads. To enumerate all the plants that have 

 been discovered within our limits would be a needless 



