10 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
taneous growths and the flesh of wild creatures, to the 
enjoyment of plenty and comfort, and the establishment 
of a home. Wherever grass grows, beauty and utility 
are brought together; society is possible, and life ceases 
to be a strife and a pain. This chapter might be ex¬ 
tended indefinitely, without it being possible to exhaust 
the subject of it. Corn and sugar, rice and paper, 
matting, cordage, thatch, the most substantial of our 
common necessities, and almost all our ordinary beve¬ 
rages—excepting coffee, tea, and wine—are furnished 
directly, or indirectly, from this wide-spread family of 
indigenous herbs. Amongst our native grasses are some 
that accomplish uses little thought of by the collector of 
specimens for a hortus siccus. Let us take one for an 
example:—here is Psamma arenaria , a British grass, 
considered rare by inland botanists, but plentiful enough 
about Hastings, and other parts of the coast. Thousands 
of acres of land washed by the sea owe their preservation 
to it, for it forms creeping roots, which extend horizon¬ 
tally in all directions in its sandy bed, and it weavesthat 
sand into a matted felt capable of resisting the denuding 
action of the tides, and thus prevents the encroachment 
of the sea, by binding the drifting material of its margin 
together. Where you find this, you may also look out for 
Elymus arenarius, Carex arenaria , and Eestuca rubra , 
and you will doubtless find them all combined in pre¬ 
serving our sloping shores intact against the sea, where, 
but for such frail defences, the waters would eat away 
their boundaries, and swallow up vast tracts of fertile 
country. The protection of this grass was the subject of 
an enactment, in 1742, just as, at an earlier date, the Scot- 
