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all these products, I think its importance can be clearly appre- 

 hended. 



I wish at the outset to present a few facts covering this 

 great family of plants called the grasses, and then I shall speak 

 very briefly of a few of the better known and standard varie- 

 ties which we have tested at the experiment station. 



In the first place, as you are doubtless aware, plants of the 

 vegetable kingdom are all grouped together into classes or 

 families, very much the same as the animal kingdom is. In the 

 animal kingdom we have got the horse, swine, sheep and so on; 

 so in the plant world we have families of plants in the same 

 way, with numerous varieties in each family. 



For instance, one large family is called the rose family, there 

 is the sun flower family, and then we have this most important 

 of all families, the grass family. Why do I say it is the most 

 important? Well, simply because it is the family that furnishes 

 a larger part of the food of our animals and ourselves than all 

 other families together. I suppose if we had to choose between 

 this one family of plants and all other plants that grow on the 

 earth's surface, however much we would dislike to give up the 

 many valuable products that come from the various families, we 

 would have to select the grass family. In the Bible it is said 

 that " all flesh is grass." That probably is a figurative ex- 

 pression, but it is a literal and scientific truth because all flesh is 

 grass. Just think what makes the flesh and the different pro- 

 ducts that come from our stock, such as milk, butter, cheese, 

 etc. It is simply grass and the products of the grass family. 



There are a few simple facts concerning this family that I 

 think cannot fail to be of interest. In the first place we have 

 thirty-five hundred different species belonging to this family of 

 plants. There is no class of plants so widely distributed as the 

 grass family ; and not only are they widely distributed, but the 

 same species and varieties are very widely scattered. Of these 

 thirty-five hundred species we have about three hundred and 

 fifty growing in the United States, and in the different northern 

 states the number of varieties is about one hundred and twenty 



