28 SEA-SIDE PLANTS. 



viceable to cattle. But the sand sedges and 

 grasses of the shore have, in general, a far more 

 important office than that of even giving suste- 

 nance to the beasts of the field. They serve to 

 bind the sands by their long roots, so that our sea 

 sands are not driven inland by the stormy winter 

 winds, which in their strength have been known 

 to carry the salt spray of ocean to a distance of 

 fifty miles from the shore. Some of the grasses 

 destined for this especial purpose, as the upright 

 sea lyme-grass, flower but rarely, and few ripen 

 their seeds by the shore. Indeed, in such unshel- 

 tered situations it would be of little use that they 

 should do so, for the high winds which prevail there 

 would either bear their seeds far away to some in- 

 land soil, or cast them on the waters of ocean, where 

 they would float and die. But grasses growing on 

 sandy spots are either viviparous, and bear young 

 plants instead of seeds, or, like those of our shores 

 in general, they are propagated by means of sub- 

 terranean shoots. Wide-spreading shoots, increas- 

 ing continually by these suckers, give their value 

 to sea-side grasses ; and were it not for their aid, 

 inland regions would be desolated by the loose sand 

 of the large sand-banks which, on some shores, 

 the mighty ocean washes up from its bed. The 

 excessively long and creeping roots of the great 

 sea-carex, as well as those of the upright sea lyme- 

 grass, and the sea-reed or matweed, are often 

 planted, that they may hold the sand together. In 

 Holland, and in our own county of Norfolk, these 

 grasses have been cultivated in order to restrain 

 the deluges of sand to which these places would be 

 subject. It has been providentially appointed that 

 no animal will touch this grass for pasturage. In 



