GRASSES OF THE HAY-FIELD 



By MAUD U. CLARKE 

 With Photographs by HENRY IRVING 



THE true Nature-lover who studies 

 unconsciously, as it were, learning 

 by a constant and never-to-be- 

 satisfied interest in all the panorama of 

 detail spread out before him, soon learns 

 that Nature is wonderfully generous. 

 There is a prodigal output, a munificent 



subtle benefaction they give in sense of 

 restfulness and heahng. For those who 

 value Nature in all its aspects, the grass 

 land standing for hay in June is one that 

 makes its special appeal to our sense of 

 the beautiful and generous. A great 

 gift is silently spread before us which even 



sum total of expressed forms, especially the meanest soul may feel in dim fashion, 

 in the plant world. Not only quality, as Almost the first thing to strike our 



supplied by the infinitely 

 varied forms, but also quan- 



tity — unstinted quantity. 

 Perhaps the grasses show this 

 indomitable persistency of 

 Hfe, this immeasurable factor 

 of quantity, the best of all. 

 They show quality, diversity, 

 beauty, a great range of ex- 

 pression, but the initial char- 

 acteristic is this display of 

 quantity in growth. If we 

 think for a minute of all the 

 grass fields, commons, tvu'fy 

 cliffs, and waste land that has 

 covered itself with green in 

 England alone, the grass 

 seems to have made a big 

 monopoly of space. And 

 then we have to recognise 

 that the credentials of the 

 grass are great ones indeed, 

 for it is granted as having 

 certified habitat over " the 

 whole world." Merely to 

 reflect upon the uncountable 

 quantity of grass blades in 

 an ordinary two-acre field 

 forces some recognition of 

 what we owe Nature in a 

 fractional space of the earth. 

 We could not easily spare 

 our grass meadows, either 

 from the point of view of 

 utihty, or from that of the 



MEADOW FOXTAIL. 



475 



attention when considering 

 the grass is the great pertin- 

 acity of life under persecu- 

 tion. Year after year the 

 fields are either grazed down 

 by cattle or shorn for hay 

 when the grass is in full 

 seeded strength ; yet it ne\'er 

 fails to renew itself. Apart 

 from the care bestowed on 

 cultivated grass land, the 

 same energy of being is 

 shown in neglected regions, 

 where the grass triumphs 

 over all sorts of ugly scars. 

 The perennial root - stock 

 seems to be the factor of in- 

 herited right to persist. If 

 the flowering stems are all 

 laid low there is left the 

 root-energy to try again. If 

 temperature is possible the 

 flowers are rebuilt as quickly 

 as can be ; but after the 

 wholesale slaughter of hay- 

 making, when flowering stems 

 and radical lea\'es are all 

 swept down, time is not long 

 enough to complete the 

 effort before the winter cold 

 temporarily checks ambition. 

 The actual destruction of the 

 seeded grass, unless required 

 for harvesting the seed it- 

 self, is of little consequence 



