14 
mals which we use either for our food or for carrying 
burthens lire upon grass and the small plants which grow 
up in the midst of it, and are full of the sweet fresh taste 
that they lore. Foremost among these stand the clover 
race, with clustered heads of small butterfly shaped blos¬ 
soms, and leaves divided into small leaflets, sometimes 
numerous, but more often in threes, the trefoil or sham¬ 
rock, dear to the Irish in honor of the holy lesson on the 
great mystery of the Christian Faith, which the Apostle 
of Ireland, St. Patrick, drew from the three leaves in one. 
The RED CLOVER PI. XII (e) is a handsome plant, with its 
round head of small purple'flowers, and the trefoil leaves, 
each variegated with white, and bearing the dew so long 
down among the shade of the rich deep grass that it must 
be food and drink at once to the grazing cow, and “in 
clover” is our very proverb for prosperity. 
The WHITE or DUTCH CLOVER (c) is smaller, and is more 
often grown in fields as a principal crop, mixed however 
with grass, and the tiny YELLOW CLOVER whose sul¬ 
phur coloured heads and black pods stand at ( d ). There 
is hardly a spot of grass to be found without the little 
trefoils of this pretty plant, and whether rightly or not, 
the bits of turf given to larks in cages are not thought 
to be good unless they bear this minute leaf. In hayfields 
it grows tall, and all the kinds have a very sweet smell, 
which like that of grass, is more fragrant after they 
have been cut. What child does not love “the tanned 
haycock in the mead” and has not happy remembrances 
of tumbling in the delicious dry grass, or building nests 
in the haycock. The wag’gon carries the sweet loads 
away, and they are built up in tall hayricks for winter 
use. 
The SAINTFOIN (/') a French name meaning holy hay, is very 
useful as it will grow in.poorer land than will good hay 
grass, and it is much liked by cattle. It is a beautiful 
flower, growing in spikes, the colour a pale crimson ex¬ 
quisitely striped with deep scarlet, and becoming more 
purple as the flower fades, so that the top of the spike 
is often light pink, and the bottom deep purple, and 
when the wind rushes over a field, it brings out change¬ 
able waves of colouring like a shot silk. 
LUCERNE, (a) so called from the lake in Switzerland, has a j 
handsome dark purple flower, and is generally grown 
apart planted in regular lines, and cut down piece by 
piece, just as it is coming into flower, and given to horses 
when no sooner has it been mown than it begins to grow 
again, and the same field may be cut bit by bit, again 
and again in the course of the summer for many years 
without being worn out. 
VETCHES (b) are another very useful green crop. With hand¬ 
some flowers growing in pairs, the standard rich crimson 
and the wings purple, and a graceful tendril hanging 
from the often divided leaves, ready to bind itself to any 
support for the weak climbing stem. Though called a 
tare, it is not the tare meant by the parable of the Enemy 
coming to sow tares among the wheat. These were a 
noxious sort of grass, so like wheat that they can hardly 
be distinguished till the ear is closelv examined, whereas 
the pretty vetch is wholesome to all the animals who eat 
the leaves, and the black round seeds are excellent food 
for tame pigeons. 
PLATE XIII. gives at fig’, b one specimen of the hosts of gras¬ 
ses that rear their graceful heads in summer, and provide 
their long ribbonlike leaves all the year long for the 
support of cattle, and the pleasure of our eyes. It would 
be a dreary world if there were no grass, to gladden our 
sight by its fresh soft green, or to spread its soft carpet 
beneath our feet. But more of this when we come to the 
more important grasses of the next plate, and let us look 
at the yellow cruciform plant grown for cattle, one of 
the numerous brethren of the cabbage kind and called 
RAPE (fig. a). In this you may see the difference be¬ 
tween the legume or pod of the papilionaceous flower, 
and the silique of the cruciform blossom. The pod opens 
all down one side, and has the seeds fastened to each of 
the valves. While the silique bursts open from the bottom 
on both sides and discloses seeds fastened to but one of 
the avles. It is the seed for which rape is cultivated — 
these little round black grains are full of oil, which is 
squeezed out of them and made into cakes, used like lin¬ 
seed for fattening- cattle, or feeding them in the winter. 
It is as winter food for cattle likewise that the great RED 
BEET c, and the still larger Mangel Wurzel, in English 
the root of scarcity, are grown. — They are both full of 
sugar, and very nourishing, and are, like the garden red- 
beet already described, huge developements of the wild 
Goosefoot, which is to be met with under every hedge. 
PLANTS XIV & XV. GRAINS. 
Though the Exogens are the most numerous and perfectly 
developed of the vegetable world, their threefold brethren 
are even more important to the human Kind. The Palm 
tree affords meat, drink, clothing and house room to the 
inhabitant of the tropics, but a still larger portion of 
the world depend upon the humbler race of grasses for 
their food and comfort. To the grass kind we owe our 
bread, our beer, our sugar, our rice, the thatch of our 
houses, the food and the bed of our cattle, — nay if all 
the grasses which clothe our hills and valleys were sud¬ 
denly taken away, man and beast would both alike be 
wretched indeed. It is the tribe which above all others 
seems to have been destined to afford sustenance to such 
of the creation, as do not live solely on flesh and even 
flesh is but grass converted into animal substance. A grass 
is a plant with a fibrous root, often creeping. — Thence 
there shoot up a few straight, veined, ribbonlike leaves, 
and hollow cylindrical stems, each terminating- in a long 
sharp leaf — splitting away out from within this first 
stem, another rises, and hangs out a leaf on the opposite 
side above the first, there comes a third, and so on till 
the plant consists of a straight hollow stem, of cases one 
within the other, and with leaves g-rowing at the joints. 
From the uppermost springs the blossom, which is com¬ 
posed of two small chaffy scales for the calyx, two again 
within them often with a bristle at the back, for the co- 
rola, three long stamens with graceful anthers hanging 
far out, one large germ soft and pulpy, and generally 
bearing two feathered stigmas. These blossoms are ar¬ 
ranged in many varying fashions, sometimes in regular 
alternate lines like the ray grass, or the wheat, some¬ 
times in nodding plumes, like the graceful brome grasses, 
sometimes in loose regular panicles like the pretty quiver 
grass or quakers, on the common. They are almost al¬ 
ways green, or whitish, or slightly ting-ed with brown, 
and their greatest ornament is the eleg-ant form of the 
anthers, which hang out on their slender filaments far 
beyond the corolla. The profusion of green leaves rising 
from the root, and sprouting the more plentifully the 
more they are cut, eaten, or trodden down is the orna¬ 
ment of our turf, the refreshment of our eyes, and the 
food of all the multitudes of grass eating cattle. The 
stems and leaves are very tough, full of particles of silex, 
or flint, and therefore very sharp, a cut on the finger with 
a grass leaf is very painful, as most of us have felt, but 
they are likewise very lasting. The largest of all gras¬ 
ses, the Bamboo, 30 or 40 feet high, furnishes pipes fit 
for the conveyance of water. Flutes and other musical in¬ 
struments are made of the hollow stems of canes and 
other grasses; and nearer home, straw serves for the roof¬ 
ing of our houses, and when split and plaited makes the 
most lasting- hats and bonnets. Moreover these valuable 
grass stems contain a sweet juice which flows out when 
they are wounded, and which may be tasted by sucking 
the joints even of our own small English grasses, — 
but which flows out in far larger quantities in the canes 
of the East and West Indies, and when boiled and purified 
becomes sugar. But our present concern is with the seeds 
of grasses, and with the various uses to which they are 
applied. In all grasses the pulpy germ hardens into a 
solid seed, the grains of various kinds which serve many 
birds for food, and which in the larger sorts are the very 
staff of life to man. Every one who has read the tra¬ 
veller’s- wonders in “Evenings at Home” must remember 
the drink made from grass seeds that so much puzzled 
the young party. And to make this drink is the chief 
mission of the brave JOHN BARLEYCORN who stands 
first in the plate, with all his pointed spears (a), namely 
the elongated bristles of his corolla. Grandly they stand 
out from the four rows of blossoms, and beautifully sil¬ 
very do they make a barley field nearly ripe, when the 
