The Book of Grasses 



that they are grasses. Vergil and Columella wrote long ago of the 

 care of meadows and fields. Indeed the word cereal stands as an 

 article of faith in the goddess Ceres, who searched with torches 

 for the grain carried off by winter frost, and on finding the seed 

 raised it to its flower once more. Bertha was the Ceres of German 

 mythology, and winds and rains affecting crops were believed to 

 be under her control. Corn-spirits there were which were sym- 

 bolized under the forms of wolves and goat-legged creatures, 

 similar to classic satyrs. To the older peasantry of Germany and 

 Russia these corn-spirits still haunt and protect the fields which 

 show the "Grass-wolf" or " Corn-wolf " to be abroad when the 

 wind, as it passes, bends the grass and the ripening grain. The last 

 sheaf of rye is occasionally left afield as shelter for the " Roggen- 

 wolf," or " Rye-wolf," and it is not long since the Iceland farmer 

 guarded the grass around his fields lest the mischievous elves, 

 hiding among the grasses, and ever waiting to harm him, should 

 invade his cultivated land. 



In old herbals the word grass, gres, gyrs meant any green 

 plant of small size, and though we have restricted the meaning of 

 the word it still is carelessly applied to a multitude of sedges 

 and rushes which in manner of growth and form of flower differ 

 markedly from the true grasses. To the casual observer the 

 grasses are but "grass," and to few is their diversity, their beauty, 

 and their value apparent. We are blind to the infinite variety 

 shown by Nature in these common plants, of which we often know 

 scarcely more than do the cattle that feed upon them; yet on no 

 other family of flowering plants does the beauty of the green 

 earth and its adaptation as a home for man so largely depend. 



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