BOTANY OF SELBORNE. 255 



the botanist should endeavour to make himself 

 acquainted with those that are useful. You shall 

 see a man readily ascertain every herb of the field, 

 yet hardly know wheat from barley, or at least one 

 sort of wheat or barley from another. 



But of all sorts of vegetation the grasses seem 

 to be most neglected ; neither the farmer nor the 

 grazier seem to distinguish the annual from the 

 perennial, the hardy from the tender, nor the suc- 

 culent and nutritive from the dry and juiceless. 



The study of grasses would be of great conse- 

 quence to a northerly and grazing kingdom. The 

 botanist that could improve the sward of the 

 district where he lived, would be an useful 

 member of society : to raise a thick turf on a 

 naked soil would be worth volumes of systematic 

 knowledge ; and he would be the best common- 

 wealth's man that could occasion the growth 

 of " two blades of grass where one alone was seen 

 before." 



XLI. 



IN a district so diversified with such a variety 

 of hill and dale, aspects and soils, it is no wonder 

 that great choice of plants should be found. 

 Chalks, clays, sands, sheep-walks and downs, 

 bogs, heaths, woodlands, and champaign fields, 

 cannot but furnish an ample flora. The deep 

 rocky lanes abound with fillces, and the pastures 

 and moist woods with fungi. If in any branch 

 of botany we may seem to be wanting, it must 

 be in the large aquatic plants, which are not to 

 be expected on a spot far removed from rivers, 

 and lying up amidst the hill country at the 

 spring- heads. To enumerate all the plants that 



