562 USES OP THE GRASSES. 



PHILOS. . 83.) Some of the Grasses have, instead of a 

 rhizoma or an upright stem, a long creeping stem, which runs 

 near or upon the surface, sending down roots into the soil, and 

 developing leaf and flower buds at intervals. This tendency has 

 already been adverted to as very troublesome in the Couchgrass 

 ( Triticum repent) ; but it is of great service to Man in the grass 

 termed the Sand-Reed (Ammophila arenaria) and others, which 

 can vegetate amidst dry and drifting sand, and are hence em- 

 ployed to give firmness to embankments, which they pierce 

 with an entangled web of living structure, that offers a resist- 

 ance rarely overcome by the force of storms, and is renewed as 

 fast as it is destroyed. Such grasses do not increase so much 

 by seeds, as by the multiplication of buds ; cattle will not eat 

 them, and hence they are providentially adapted to escape that 

 mode of destruction ; but when they have been uprooted by the 

 thoughtlessness or ignorance of Man, the most serious evils have 

 arisen. In Scotland, for example, large tracts of once fertile 

 country have been rendered barren, by the encroachment of sand 

 hills, which have given them the desert-like aspect of Egyptian 

 plains; and this encroachment has resulted from the wanton 

 destruction of the mat grasses, which were pulled up by the 

 country people for fuel, to such an extent, that an Act of Par- 

 liament was passed about an hundred years ago, rendering it 

 punishable to do so. 



737. Less need be here said of the uses of this tribe to Man, 

 since they are more obvious than those of most others, espe- 

 cially to the inhabitants of temperate climates. When it is con- 

 sidered that all the Wheat, Barley, Oats, Rye, and other Corn- 

 grains used as food by Man, as also Rice, and Maize or Indian 

 Corn, which support an even larger number than the former, 

 the Sugar, which is now become not only an article of luxury to 

 him, but of necessity, and the various grasses that form the 

 staple food of nearly all the animals, upon which he relies for 

 the supply of his appetite and for assistance in his labours, it 

 will be at once seen that no single tribe can be compared with 

 the Gramineae in importance to him. We have had to notice 

 other tribes and even particular species, which are of the most 



