NATURAL SYSTEM. 
31 
The lily tribe, constituted of bulbous 
rooted plants, with beautiful large flowers, 
regular in the exhibition of six stamens and 
one central style, and having seeds imbed¬ 
ded in a soft substance. 
The grasses afford another familiar illus¬ 
tration of this arrangement. The wheat 
and meadow grass of our climate, are 
bounded on the north by rye, oats, and a 
more mossy herbage; while on the south 
they are superseded by maize, rice, and 
large leaved grasses of ranker growth. 
There are upwards of eight hundred species 
of this invaluable tribe, all connected by 
common characters, and all associated in a 
general utility. They constitute about one 
part in twenty of the actual vegetation of 
the globe, and their large adaptation to the 
sustenance of man and of domesticated 
animals, renders their wide distribution a 
circumstance worthy of admiration. In the 
language of ''rare” Ben Jonson, "The 
order of God’s creatures in themselves is 
not only admirable and glorious, but elo¬ 
quent.” 
There is one truth which lies at the 
