GLUMACEOUS PLANTS. 253 



which a brighter sun and more cloudless sky are 

 capable of supplying. Bread is exclusively prepared 

 from the flour or albumen of the seeds of various 

 kinds of corn, chiefly from wheat, and the richness 

 of pastures depends essentially upon the species of 

 Grasses that inhabit them. If it were not for the 

 creeping subterranean stems of maritime Grasses, 

 which can vegetate amidst dry and drifting sand, the 

 banks which man heaps up as a barrier against the 

 ocean would be blown away in the first hurricane ; 

 but the Sea-reeds (Ammophila), Lyme-grasses (Ely- 

 mus). Wheat-grasses (Triticum), and others, vege- 

 tate rapidly on such embankments, and, piercing 

 the soil in every direction with their tough under- 

 ground stems, presently form an entangled web of 

 living matter, w^hich is spontaneously renewed as fast 

 as it is destroyed, and which oflfers a resistance to the 

 storm which is rarely overcome. Finally, the Bamboo 

 alone is capable of supplying all the wants of savage 

 man ; with its lightest shoots he makes his arrows, 

 thin strips of the wood form bow-strings, and from 

 the larger stems he fabricates a bow ; a long and 

 slender shoot affbrds him a lance shaft, and he finds 

 its hardened point a natural head for the weapon. 

 With the larger stems he builds the walls and roof 

 of his house ; its leaves aflbrd him an impenetrable 

 thatch ; split into narrow slips it gives him the 

 material for weavin"^ his floor mats, and other articles 

 of domestic convenience ; its fibre furnishes him with 

 twine, and its leaves provide him with paper, when 

 he becomes sensible of the utility of such a material. 



