86 EVERT WOMAN HER OWN FLOWER GARDENER. 



Ornamental Grasses. 



The varieties of grasses are almost innumerable. There are already 

 known and described three thousand species in the world, and in Amer- 

 ica alone there are six hun-dred. On a small bit of turf, not a foot 

 square, you may often find five or six different kinds. Our prairies 

 abound in numerous varieties some radiated, and variegated purple 

 and green, like the peacock's plumage others pinnated and feathery, as 

 the marabout's plume ; but all exceedingly beautiful ! 



The Durva grass of the Hindoos is one of the most perfect that is 

 known. 



Sir William Jones remarks that : 



" The flowers in their perfect state afford 'the loveliest object in crea- 

 tion ; and when examined with a microscope, they resemble emeralds 

 and rubies trembling in the slightest breath of air. Nor is the Durva 

 less esteemed for its valuable qualities. It affords the sweetest and most 

 nutritious pasturage for cattle ; and its usefulness and beauty induced 

 the Hindoos, even in the earliest ages, to believe that it was the dwelling 

 place of a presiding and benevolent nymph, who loved to listen to the 

 cropping of dewy herbage by flocks and herds in meadows, and beside 

 clear streams. Poets feigned that looking forth from her diverging 

 spike, adorned with purple flowers and ranged in two close, alternate 

 rows, wherever she presided blights and mildews were unknown, and 

 that the air was loaded with fragrance, as if from bowers of balm, 

 although neither roses, citrons, richly scented magnolias, nor orange 

 trees grew contiguous." 



The Veda celebrates this inimitable grass in the following sentence 

 of the A. E. harvana: 



" May the Durva, which arose from the waters of life, and which hath 

 a hundred roots and a hundred stems, prolong my existence on earth 

 for a hundred years." 



Linnaeus kneeled beside the northern holy grass, and thanked the 

 Lord for having made it. Paley, the great moralist, loved the grasses, 

 and delighted in the inspection of their tiny florets. And Christ taught 

 us a lesson of faith from them, saying: 



" Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, 

 and to-morrow is cast into the oven ; shall He not much more clothe 

 you, ye of little faith?" 



