PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON 

 THE GRASSES. 



It has been remarked of the grasses that they are 

 the true plebeians of the vegetable kingdom, consti- 

 tuting, as they do, the broad understratum of its vast 

 society of flowering plants. They form a group of 

 vast extent and of universal distribution, occupying 

 every range of temperature, from the most extreme of 

 polar lands to those under the equator, and from the 

 low ocean shores of the tropics to the alpine limits of 

 perpetual frost. 



The grasses have found a name in every tongue and 

 time, from the earliest periods of human record or 

 tradition ; and the application of the seeds of many of 

 them to the support of mankind is of such remote 

 origin as to be not only beyond the earliest annals 

 of the human race, but even to figure as a myth in 

 the traditions which preceded them, and to occasion 

 the practice of agriculture amongst all nations of anti- 

 quity to be deduced from the teachings of a god. We 

 can understand how the attention of people would be 

 attracted to certain of the larger fruits as articles of 



