THE STORY OF A BLADE OF GRASS. 
11 
tish parliament passed an act to protect Mymus arenarius. 
By the act of 1742, the cutting of the grass was prohibited, 
and the prohibition extended even to the proprietors of the 
soil. This same grass is the chief defence of the coast of 
Holland against the encroachments of the ocean; and a 
closely allied grass, Psamma Baltica , performs a similar 
service on the sandy coasts of the Baltic. This grass 
has hard elastic foliage, and tough culms, and at Has¬ 
tings has been long in use for the manufacture of baskets, 
mats, and fancy goods, of which samples were exhibited 
by Miss Bock, of Hastings, in Class IY. of the United 
Kingdom Products, in the Great Exhibition of 1851. 
Suppose a waste of sand, on which, according to the super¬ 
ficial dicta, “ nothing will growplace this Hastings’ 
grass on it, and let a thousand delicate fingers find 
tasteful and useful occupation in the conversion of its 
stems into articles of household use and ornament, and 
one despised weed may become the founder of a town, a 
city, or a colony. Phragmites communis, the common 
reed of our ditches, is another of these basket grasses, 
as well as one of the best of thatching materials; this 
makes culms of six to ten feet high, which are used to 
furnish the strong framework on which the finer grasses 
are woven, in the making of mats and baskets. What 
the mat grasses accomplish for the defence of sandy 
shores this giant grass does for river banks and the 
sloping sides of pools and ditches; its roots convert the 
loose boundary lines into firm water walls, and stay the 
progress of denudation. 
We might take each of the known grasses, and specify 
their uses, without lapsing into commonplace; but the 
