62 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



which only two of them can be distinguished at all. 

 However, one group of very large and tall grasses, the 

 bamboo tribe, still keeps all three of its petals ; it is 

 the smallness of our English kinds which has made the 

 third and innermost disappear. The stamens are still 

 all right ; they keep up their original number of three ; 

 while in the fruit two of the cells have become abortive, 

 for a reason which we will presently consider, and only 

 one remains to produce a little corn-like grain. Our 

 spike of meadow-brome contains several dozen such 

 very tiny and degenerate lily blossoms. 



But if the grasses are so degraded, why do they suc- 

 ceed in life so well ? One has only to cast an eye at the 

 fields around one to see that they have fared not badly 

 in the struggle for existence. In the first place we must 

 remember that in a natural state there are not, as a rule, 

 nearly so many grasses as we see about us in England. 

 Virgin forest would naturally cover much of the land 

 which we have given over to meadow and pasture for 

 our own purposes ; and even where great prairies occupy 

 many miles together, they are by no means so exclu- 

 sively grassy as most people who have not seen them 

 are apt to imagine. Setting this aside, however, it must 

 be allowed that the grasses are really a very successful 

 family, one of the most successful on earth. But the 

 truth is, they owe their success to their very degeneracy. 

 The most highly developed types of plants or animals 

 are never by any means the most numerous. There are 

 more acorn barnacles on a single mile of tide-covered 

 rock than there are human beings in all the British isles. 

 Who can count the number of little green aphides on a 

 solitary rose-leaf, or the number of mites in a single 



