FLOWER-LAND. 



CHAPTER XII. 



USES OF PLANTS. 



THE grass by the 

 roadside reminds 

 us how useful 

 plants are to 

 mankind iorfood, 

 for no natural 

 order is more so 

 than that of the 

 grasses. The 

 wheat, the barley, 

 and the oats of 

 our cornfields all 

 belong to it, and 

 so does rice, 

 which is the chief 

 food of so many 

 millions of people in the East. But if we begin to 

 count up the plants we use for food, how many there are. 

 You can easily tell me more than a dozen, the stems, 

 or leaves, or seed vessels, or seeds of which we use as 



Fig. 38 The Deadly Nightshade. 

 (Atropa belladonna.} 



