may in like manner err as to the limits of this great family of 

 vegetation, by confounding with it Sedges, Spike-rushes, and a 

 host of plants which, organically considered, are as distinct from 

 Grasses as an elm is from an oak. Allowing, however, for such 

 circumstances, which are rather the results of convenience on the 

 one hand and of inattention on the other, the group of plants here 

 illustrated is as well defined, as decidedly separated from the other 

 grand divisions of the vegetable kingdom, as in the animal are 

 birds from mammals, or reptiles from fishes. Such, indeed, is the 

 uniformity of appearance throughout the tribe, that, while other 

 races of plants have been, almost universally, confounded by the 

 writers of antiquity, or only distinguished by their difference of 

 habit, as trees and herbs, the Grasses have found a name in every 

 tongue and time from the earliest periods of human record or 

 tradition. This distinction, indeed, is made in the most ancient of 

 existing Books, where we are informed that, on the third day of 

 creation, "the earth brought forth Grass, and herb yielding seed 

 after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit," — the sacred and learned 

 historian employing the popular phraseology and simple classifica- 

 tion of his time and people. 



Now that Botany has assumed the rank of a science, and a 

 closer inquiry into the structure and properties of plants- demands 

 ^more extended system of arrangement than previously answered 

 the purposes of the naturalist and others concerned in their study, 

 it is essential that we should analyse the characteristic features, 

 upon which the separation of a Grass from other grass-like vegeta- 

 tion depends. In a book intended for general reference, it would 

 be well to avoid all technical phraseology ; but, as we must examine 

 and describe parts and organs that have no familiar English names, 

 this is only possible to a limited extent. By a passing explanation, 

 however, of the terms employed, or, in the absence of this, by 

 reference to the short glossary which follows the present introduc- 

 tion, the author trusts to convey to the uninitiated reader the 



