618 THE GRASSES. 
copic objects. In common with sedges, the grasses have fibrous 
roots. To describe the flowers, without the use of actual speci- 
mens or drawings, is a difficult matter. Let the following quota- 
tion supplement the above remarks : 
“« A few rudimentary leaves collected at the pon of the branches 
of inflorescence Poa constituting flowers, a very small number of 
stamens inclosed in a thin pericarp [skin or alid" a the fruit], 
are all that aatik provides to enable these plants to preserve 
their race and to ptr gon their numerous kinds pta one 
another. Yet with such a simple apparatus, many thousand spe- 
cies are so precisely ADANA, that the natural order of grasses 
is perhaps one of the easiest to study and arrange, provided the 
task be commenced upon right principles.” 
There is, despite the above statement, scarcely an order more 
dreaded by the young student. It is a good test of his love for 
science and severe application, if he persistently investigates it. It 
contains three thousand or more species generally diffused over 
the earth. 
With us, the ai are usually small and grow close together, 
forming a mat, though even here there is much diversity in the 
habit of growth, the Aira or hair-grass, for instance, forming iso- 
lated clumps. In the tropics the plants are often much larger 
—the bamboo sometimes attaining a length of ninety feet —and 
there is little or no tendency to form a sward. 
It is useless to speak of the value of the grass family to man. 
It is enough to say that it produces all the cereal grains, most of 
the forage plants, the valued sugar-cane, and the bamboo, applied 
by the natives of the East to such a multiplicity of purposes, that 
we are led to wonder if they could survive without it. Man by 
observing processes of nature, has in some cases usefully applied 
certain species of grass to prevent the encroachments of the sea, 
the fibrous and interlacing roots serving admirably to bind the 
shifting sands. No injurious properties are known positively to 
appertain to the order, except in the case of the darnel (Lolium 
tennulentum), the fruit of which is acknowledged to be pernicious. 
Of our common grasses there are many that are beautiful, none 
more so to our thinking than the wild rice (Zizania), which we have 
often admired on our northern rivers as it nodded over the passing 
row-boat. The flowers are larger than usual in this genus, and 
are elegantly marked with light bands of red. It is curious how 
