OF SELBORNE. 
peculiar produce, our natural wants bring on a mutual inter- 
course ; so that by means of trade each distant part is supplied 
with the growth of every latitude. But without the knowledge 
of plants and their culture we must have been content with our 
hips and haws, without enjoying the delicate fruits of India and 
the salutiferous drugs of Peru. 
Instead of examining the minute distinctions of every various 
species of each obscure genus, the botanist should endeavour 
to make himself acquainted w^ith those that are useful. You 
shall see a man readily ascertain every herb of the field, yet 
hardly know wheat from barley, or at least one sort of wheat 
or barley from another. 
But of all sorts of vegetation the grasses seem to be most 
neglected ; neither the farmer nor the grazier seem to distin- 
guish the annual from the perennial, the hardy from the tender, 
nor the succulent and nutritive from the dry and juiceless. 
The study of grasses would be of great consequence to a 
northerly and grazing kingdom. The botanist that could 
improve the sward of the district where he lived would be a 
useful member of society : to raise a thick turf on a naked soil 
would be worth volumes of systematic knowledge ; and he 
would be the best commonwealth's man that could occasion 
the growth of two blades of grass where only one was seen 
before." 
Selborne. June 2, 1778. • , 
LETTER LXXXlir. 
TO THE IIOXOUUABLE DAIXES BARRINGToy. 
In a district so diversified with such a variety of hill and dale, 
aspects, and soils, it is no wonder that great choice of plants 
should be found. Chalks, clays, sands, sheep-walks and downs, 
bogs, heaths, woodlands, and champaign fields, cannot hut furnish 
an ample Flora. The deep rooky lanes abound with filiccs, and 
Q 
