1 6^ Flowei^s and their Pedigirces. 



connects the grasses and cereals with the Hlies is 

 absolutely unbroken, and that it consists throughout 

 of one continuous course of degradation. At the same 

 time, by this one-sided and spiky arrangement, the 

 grasses secured for themselves an exceptional advan- 

 tage in the struggle for existence. No other race of 

 small wind-fertilised plants could compete with them 

 for the possession of the open wind-swept plains ; and 

 over all these they spread far and wide, rapidly dif- 

 ferentiating themselves into a vast number of divergent 

 genera and species, each adaptively specialised for 

 some peculiar habitat, soil, or climate. At the present 

 time, the grasses number their kinds by thousands ; 

 they extend over the whole world from the poles to 

 the equator ; and they form the general sward or 

 carpet of greenery over by far the larger portion of the 

 terrestrial globe. Even in Britain alone, with our poor 

 little insular flora, a mere fragment of that belonging to 

 the petty European continent, we number no less than 

 forty-two genera of grasses, distributed into more than 

 one hundred species. In fact, what may fairly be 

 called degradation from one point of view may fairly 

 be called adaptation from another. The organisation 

 of the grasses is certainly lower than that of the lilies, 

 but it fits them better for that station of life to which 

 it has pleased nature to assign them. 



