FOOTPATHS. 15 



Pluck a handful and spread them out side by side 

 and this is at once evident. Nor is any single blade 

 the same shade all the way up. There may be a 

 faint yellow towards the root, a full green about the 

 middle, at the tip perhaps the hot sun has scorched 

 it, and there is a trace of brown. The older grass, 

 which comes up earliest, is distinctly different in tint 

 from that which has but just reached its greatest 

 height, and in which the sap has not yet stood still. 



Under all there is the new grass, short, sweet, and 

 verdant, springing up fresh between the old, and 

 giving a tone to the rest as you look down into the 

 bunches. Some blades are nearly grey, some the 

 palest green, and among them others, torn from 

 the roots perhaps by rooks searching for grubs, are 

 quite white. The very track of a rook through the 

 grass leaves a different shade each side, as the blades 

 are bent or trampled down. 



The stalks of the bennets vary, some green, some 

 yellowish, some brown, some approaching whiteness, 

 according to age and the condition of the sap. Their 

 tops, too, are never the same, whether the pollen 

 clings to the surface or whether it has gone. Here 

 the green is almost lost in red, or quite; here the 

 grass has a soft, velvety look ; yonder it is hard and 

 wiry, and again graceful and drooping. Here there are 

 bunches so rankly verdant that no flower is visible and 

 no other tint but dark green ; here it is thin and short, 

 and the flowers, and almost the turf itself, can be seen ; 

 then there is an array of bennets (stalks which bear 

 the grass-seed) with scarcely any grass proper. 



Every variety of grass — and they are many — has 



