GRASSES. 23 



Stoke Park, which was long the seat of the Penn 

 family of Pennsylvania celebrity. 



These plants show to much better advantage when 

 grown separately, as the long leaves, of which there 

 is a great profusion, hang in thick tufts on every 

 side. From the centre of these, the tall straight 

 stems rise several feet above the mass of foliage, and 

 are crowned with large plume-like heads of silvery- 

 white flowers. Some of these separate plants have 

 attained the height of fourteen feet, with a diameter 

 of about eighteen feet; and occasionally they have 

 been seen with as many as fifty heads of flowers. 



How beautifully does this majestic species com- 

 pare with some of the humble little varieties which 

 are scattered over our meadows ! and yet, while Grod 

 hath given extraordinary grace and beauty to one, 

 he has also endowed the others with qualities which 

 render them none the less curious, and far more use- 

 ful. How wonderfully are they adapted to the various 

 uses assigned them ! If animals were allowed to feed 

 upon the foliage of the Pampas Grass, its beauty 

 would be marred, and the life of the plant endan-- 

 gered ; but not so with the meadow-grass ; the more 

 its leaves are cropped, the wider spreads the plant ; 

 the more it is trampled upon, the thicker and softer 

 it grows ; and so far from being killed by the frosts 

 of winter, it seems only to gather more life from re- 

 pose, and upon the return of spring it again shoots 

 forth with renewed freshness and vi^or 



