6 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
brought me there was being sacrificed by loitering. 
How rejoiced was I, however, when, in a volume pub¬ 
lished by Mr. Alfred Smee (I think it was upon 
"Instinct"), an account of this tree was given, and its 
origin traced to the deposit there of a cherry stone by 
some wandering bird. It always seemed to me, how¬ 
ever, that it was much more likely a wandering boy, 
like myself, after having made a purchase of cherries at 
the adjoining fruit-stall, had tossed a cherry stone over 
to the stone buttress, and with a million chances to one 
against it, the million had failed and the one had 
triumphed, and the seed took root and sprang up. 
Alas! it was like the seed that fell on stony ground, 
that we read of in one of our Lord's parables, which 
endured only for a while, and perished. There, too, it 
once more resembled " Picciola," but there was no pri¬ 
soner to appeal for it, and no emperor to command the 
lifting of the stone, and the supplying of its roots with a 
handful of soil to save it. 
The Graminece comprise thirteen very distinct tribes, 
over three hundred genera, and not less than fifteen 
hundred species, of which the British Isles can lay claim 
to at least a hundred and fifty. There is no part of the 
world but in which some of the members of the family 
are to be found. In the tropics they rival oaks in mag¬ 
nitude, and mingle with the arborescent vegetation as 
essential elements of the jungle and the forest; and 
where life expires in the embraces of perpetual winter, 
grasses are the last of flowering plants that linger on the 
verge of those silent regions of frost and death. In 
South Shetland islands, at an elevation of 7,000 feet. 
