4 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF BRITISH GRASSES. 
studying descriptions in the different botanical and agricul- 
tural works devoted to them. 
But again, the facts above glanced at show that it is 
almost impossible to study the grasses with that celerity 
requisite to engage the attention of the non-botanical 
inquirer without engravings of many of the species; and. 
this, in the form in which it has hitherto been done, renders 
works upon them too expensive for general use, and even 
when obtained they will be found rather to present botanical 
than agricultural matter; these, however, have to a con- 
siderable extent been admirably combined in Sinelair’s 
Graminea Woburnensis. But as in the present day ad- 
ditional knowledge has been obtained upon grasses, the 
combined results of experiments and observations by the 
cultivator, the chemist, and the botanist, it seems desirable 
to claim attention for some notes upon the subject in a 
manner which may come the more immediately before the 
eye of the intelligent farmer and the general student; and 
in the accomplishment of this object it is intended to offer a 
series of notices having reference to the following subjects:— 
1. General observations on the Natural History of 
Grasses. 
2. The Structure and Anatomy of Grasses, and the Clas- 
sification founded thereon. 
3. Descriptions of Genera and Species, with notices of 
their qualities and distribution. 
1. General Observations on the Natural History of the 
British Grasses —Grasses, as they appear over the surface 
of the globe, naturally divide themselves into two sections 
—Cereal or cultivated corn-grasses, and Natural or wild 
grasses. 
Now, the first do not appear to grow anywhere as wild 
plants, but may in all cases be deemed as derivatives ob- 
tained from wild examples by cultivation through a long 
series of years, and hence the varieties—not species—-which 
will be found to abound in all of them. These variations 
maintain a great permanency of form if the circumstances 
