Grass 
Rice, wheat, oats, Indian corn (not to speak of barley) 
are essential to man’s existence. Each might perhaps 
be said to support a particular kind of man, and perhaps 
to be responsible for some of his characteristics, 
The Hindu, Fellahin, Malagasy, or Chinese paddy- 
field means long monotonous dabbling with loathsome 
mud in a hot and moist climate, and does perhaps 
really produce a mild, not very brave, industrious dis- 
position very different from that of the northern oats, 
of which only a small crop can be wrested by incessant 
fighting with a stubborn soil in a climate which very 
few can love and none praise, at least honestly. 
Even the Zulu and Kaffir, nourished on milk and 
maize, with perhaps a little millet, differ entirely from 
rice-fed Asiatics. But we cannot here enter into these 
abstruse questions. 
An order so widely distributed and so various in its 
demands for rain, warmth, and sunshine must be re- 
markable for something particularly ingenious and 
efficient in its outfit. 
The grasses are in fact very different from all other 
orders, and only show a very distant relationship to the 
Cyperacez. 
Perhaps the most characteristic point about them is 
the manner in which-the young growing stem is pro- 
tected. When the corn has germinated in early summer, 
it remains for quite a long time with only the leaf-tips 
projecting above the earth. The young stem and future 
ear are buried and enclosed in a series, one within the 
other, of cylindrical sheathing leaf-bases. These “nests” 
of enveloping leaf sheaths are extremely efficient. They 
are thin, tough, and hard, and completely enclose the 
young bud; being bad conductors of heat or cold, and 
full of flinty secretions, they also protect it from changes 
in temperature, from drought, and from insects. 
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