CHAPTER XXIII 
GRASS 
OF all plants there are perhaps none so full of interest 
and so wonderfully designed as the great grass family. 
It is quite a cosmopolitan order, varying in the most 
remarkable way to suit the exigencies of almost every 
climate in the world. The tree-like grasses such as 
bamboos, and the like, force themselves on one’s notice 
everywhere in or near the tropics. The beauty of a great 
feathery, gracefully-drooping bamboo clump cannot be 
overlooked. In Chili one may have to hew one’s way at 
the rate of fifty yards an hour through the Chusquiea, 
another climbing grass, which winds round tall trees and 
hangs in graceful folds in amongst the foliage everywhere. 
Near the top of Ruwenzori it takes nearly a day to 
pass through the bamboo zone; generally dark, damp, 
dripping, and miserable, and where the ground is covered 
by viciously stinging nettle-like plants. 
There are other weird grasses growing over many 
stretches of the Australian bushes into which no sheep 
are ever allowed to go on account of the long spiny 
tips of their fruits, which work themselves into the wool. 
They even pierce the skin and sometimes kill the sheep, 
but of course its fleece is so matted and torn and 
penetrated by the wiry winding threads that it is of no 
value whatever. But grasses of this morose, solitary 
and wicked disposition are very unusual. The vast 
majority of them are exceedingly benignant ; indeed 
it is they who make possible all sorts of civilisation, 
for they constitute by far the larger part of the food of 
mankind and also of his dependent domestic animals. 
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