GRASS. 
187 
Thanks then to the Divine Author of all Good, green parks, 
flowery meads, and closely shaven lawns, belong’ to our 
climate, and this affords us, after all, no small balance in its 
favour. 
Seeing, then, that the grass of the field is so important an 
element in all that is English in scenery, and is besides so 
interwoven with the economics of our daily life, we purpose 
devoting a few pages to the illustration of the structure, 
classification , habits, and economy, of the useful tribe of plants 
to which grasses belong. 
Time was when most herbaceous plants were known by the 
general term of grass, and even in the present day, plants very 
different from those we are about to describe, are familiarly 
known by the word grass as a prefix, or affix, thus : — • 
Grass of Parnassus, ( Parnassia palustris) ; scurvy-grass, 
(' Cochlearia officinalis') ; rib-grass,* (Plantago lanceolata). 
Science, however, insists upon a more natural arrangement, 
and so confines the term grass within the following descrip- 
tion : — 
Endogenous plants, with chaffy scales in place of floral enve- 
lopes (calyx and corolla). The outer pair of scales, called 
glume, or outer pale,— the calyx. The internal pair called 
ylumel or inner pale, — corolla. Stamens, usually three; 
pistils, mostly two ; stems, fistulose jointed — that is, a hollow 
jointed tube ; leaves, sheathing. 
As a botanical group, there is none more natural, and yet 
none more varied ; but such variations are of the most simple 
kind, and when once understood, the study of this tribe of 
plants, far from being considered one of a difficult kind, will 
really become comparatively easy ; for as the observed variations 
mostly ai’ise from a difference in the proportions of parts, if we 
start with correct notions of the organography of a single 
species, we can have but little difficulty in applying our know- 
ledge to the examination (analysis) of all others. 
The chief distinctions of grasses may be classed under the 
following heads : — 
a. In the size and details of the parts of the flower. 
b. In the length of the pedicels, or the flowering stems, 
by which each individual flower, or bunch ( locust a ) 
of flowers, is immediately supported. 
r. In the general size of the whole grass. 
In order, then, to understand these points, it will be necessary 
* One of our students was showing a farmer a collection of all the meadow 
grasses, when the latter took occasion to observe that the rib-grass was 
absent. 
