218 BOTANY GRASSES, 



content with our hips and haws, without enjoying the delicate 

 fruits of India, and the salutiferous drugs of Peru. 



Instead of examining the minute distinctions of every various 

 species of each obscure genus, 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 distin- 

 guish the annual from the perennial, the hardy from the tender, 

 nor the succulent and nutritive from the dry and juiceless. j- 



The study of grasses would be of great consequence to a 

 northerly and grazing kingdom. The botanist that could 

 improve the sward of the district where he lived, would be 

 a 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 commonwealth's man that could occasion the 

 growth of " two blades of grass where one alone was seen before." 



LETTER LXXXIII. 



TO THE HON. DANIES HARRINGTON. 



SELBORNE, July 3, 1778. 



DEAR SIR, 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 filices, 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 



* The observations and experiments of one generation after another, 

 have enabled us progressively to improve, by culture, the cereal grasses, 

 into those valuable plants wheat and barley, which now maintain millions 

 of our fellow men. ED. 



f Of late not only the attention of the naturalist, but also of the farmer, 

 has been directed to the study of grasses, to the preference of particulai 

 species, and to the relative produce of the different kinds. Among the 

 works which have most contributed to the advancement of this highly 

 important department of agriculture, we would mention Curtis on British 

 Grasses, and the splendid and valuable Hortus Gramineus Woburnensis ; 

 and in Young's Farmer's Magazine many interesting experiments have 

 been recorded. ED. 



