Grasses 157 
fertilized. The cone-bearing trees have blossoms 
which still adhere to these most ancient of all 
floral customs, 
Later came the insect-fertilized flowers, with 
pretty corollas developed especially to charm their 
winged friends. 
The grasses, in their present form, seem the 
latest flowers of all. They have reached a third 
condition, and after acquiring calyx and corolla 
to please insects, have abandoned these little mes- 
sengers,—or been abandoned by them,—and have 
reverted to the primitive ancestral habit of depend- 
ence upon the wind. 
Though the wind and the grasses take opposite 
sides in the contest between earth and sea, they are, 
on the whole, close friends. For the wind is not 
only the agent for the cross-fertilization of the 
grasses. He is the master-artificer who has 
moulded and fashioned them in every part, from 
root to flower. 
If we pick a spear of ‘‘red-top’’ we find that its 
stem is hollow. The hollow stems of the grasses, 
like those of the dandelion, have the utmost 
strength obtainable with economy of material, and 
both strength and economy are needed in the 
structure of a stalk which must uphold, in the 
