NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 169 



Dr. Smith, the celebrated President of the Linnaean Society, observes, that botany 

 necessarily leads to the study of insects ; for it is impossible to investigate plants, in 

 their native situations, without having our attention perpetually awakened by the infinite 

 variety of those active little beings, employed in a thousand different ways, in supplying 

 themselves with food and lodging, in repulsing the attacks of their enemies, or in exer- 

 cising a more than Asiatic despotism over myriads below them ; and he exultingly ex- 

 claims that, in England, no branch of natural history, after botany, has, for some yeara, 

 had more attention paid to it than entomology : while with us, to adopt the language of 

 Dr. Barton, " Notwithstanding the importance of the science of entomology, the history 

 of our insects has hitherto excited but little attention." 



NOTE K K. 



Mb. Green, in his Discourse on the Botany of the United States, pronounces, that 

 the fioriu grass is a native of this country ; that it has been discovered in Sussex county, 

 New-Jersey, on the margin of the Genessee river, and on an island below the city of 

 Albany. Whether this be the same as the florin grass of Europe is still a question sub 

 judice. In 1749 Kalm visited the island below Albany, and in his journal he has men- 

 tioned several of its vegetable productions : the agrostis stolonifera, if growing there at 

 that time, escaped his penetrating eye ; but, whether indigenous or not, we know that it 

 has been imported and successfully cultivated ; that its alimentary qualities, and its 

 crops, are great beyond example, and that it flourishes in defiance of soil, drought, and 

 climate. 



I do not know that saintfoin, or sainfoin, (hedysarum onobrychis,) which signifies whole- 

 some hay, has succeeded as well in this country as in France, from whence it is derived. 

 The milk of cows fed on it is nearly double, and makes most excellent cream and butter. It 

 fattens sheep better than any other food, and horses require no oats, although hard worked, 

 when they are fed with it. Its increase of produce exceeds that of common grass land 

 about thirty times, and it will last from ten to fifteen years. It yields an aftermath, or 

 second crop. 



Curtis, in his Practical Observations on British Grasses, speaks slightingly of the fes- 

 iuca ovina, and says that it appears to him applicable only to the purpose of making a 

 fine-leaved grass-plot, that shall require little or no mowing. On the other hand, Wither- 

 ing, in his botanical arrangement of all the vegetables naturally growing in Great Bri- 



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