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Qrasses are the greatest single source of wealth in the wrld, for 
they furnish not only the breadstuff s but are the principal constituent 
of pastures, wherefore meat and dairy products, leather, and wool, 
are secondai^srpiroduct s of grass. 
Besides food, grasses furnish endless other necessities. More than 
a hundred commercial products are nov^ made from maize (or corn) from 
alcohol to wall boards from the gum on your postage stamp to your **rabber^ 
hot-water bottle^^ for so called '*red rubber*' erasers, rings for fruit 
jars, sponges, bathmats if# are not rubber but a by product of corn. The 
amber head of your umbrella is very likelir derived from corn stalks 
and now furfural, made also from cornstalks is being used in the construe* 
tion of roads, making the cement more durable. It would take . > an houfr ' 
just to name the uses of grasses. 
So large and important a family as the grasses necessarily requires 
critical study,. Dr^ George Yasey in the 80* s of the last 
century, the Department of Agriculture l|i4i^ maintained specialists on 
grasses. The grass collection of the United States National Herbarima 
is the largest and by far the most nearly complete collection of grasse 
in the world . Students have come from all over th^* count ry,^d even froS 
China ^to study in this herbarium and^the library connected with it. A 
herbarium is to the study of plant s what a dictionary is to literature ; 
it enables us to use words in the same sense, to communicate knowledge 
with precision. 
