the coast of Cornwall, called after it Asparagus Island, and also on the coast of the Isle of Wight. Here, too, you will find the sedges-plenty of them— for there are sixty-two English kinds, many of them very common by river sides and in woods. You would be apt at first sight to call them grasses, but though their first cousins they belong to a different family, and are of no use to man, whereas grasses are most valuable. They are known by always having a three-cornered stem, remarkably harsh to the touch, and no wonder, for it is full of silex, the substance that gives hardness to flint stones. This is very wonderful, but I cannot explain it. The leaves do not, like those of the grasses, form the stem itself, though they seem at first sight to do so, for they are rolled round the stem at the lower part and sheath it. They are generally of a pale yellowish green, suiting the autumn tints, when the wood sedges usually blossom. The flowers grow in separate spikes, the fertile ones the lowest down, and generally all green, consisting of small chaffy scales protecting a hairy, bottle-shaped, two-divided germ, with three stigmas. The barren spikes are much prettier, for their scales are dark brown or black, and their anthers hang from them in multitudes of yellow or sulphur colour. A spike in full flower, bowing in its graceful manner its soft yellow plume, between two darkened unopened spikes on the bending stem, presents so pretty a mixture of colour that I wonder we do not oftener see it in river-side nosegays. In every blossom of this thick scaly head are three stamens, for the sedge is as constant to the rule of three as its relations the grass and the rush. One of these rushes is the Papyrus, the reed of Egypt, on the rind of which, in former times, people used to write with an iron pen, digging in the letters. It was from this that paper was named. It was the real bulrush of Moses' ark. I have a piece of this paper rush which was raised in a hot-house; it is very large, a regular triangle in shape, the blossoms on branches all growing out together at the top. The green skin is tough and leathery, not at all like paper, you would say, and it is filled with a quantity of white pith. The skin was spread out on frames and written on-or rather scratched into with a sharp pen-in the curious picture-writing of ancient Egypt. Many of these writings have been found and read by scholars, and you may see them framed and glazed all along the walls of the British Museum. The spider-wort has all its flowers packed up in a sheath, and has linear leaves. CHAPTER XLIII GRASSES HERE, in this Endogen class, are those precious gifts the grasses, perhaps the most valuable of the whole of the vegetable creation, the food of man and beast. You are surprised now, for you never thought of eating grass, you never heard of any one who did, excepting Nebuchadnezzar in the time of his punishment. But what shall you think when I tell you that without grasses you would have neither bread, beer, gruel, porridge, rice, nor sugar, to say nothing of the mutton and beef, the milk, butter, and cheese, which are supplied to us by animals which live on grasses! I will give you a description which applies to every kind of grass. The root is creeping, the stem smooth, round, hollow, and jointed, the lower part consisting of leaves; long, narrow, undivided leaves, rolled up and sheathed one over the other. At each joint one of these leaves ceases to embrace the others, and hangs down, tapering off to a point, while the one next above it becomes the outside covering, and so continues till the next joint, where it, too, opens and hangs down, on the opposite side to the former one. Each joint contains a certain quantity of sweet sugary juice. The stem, properly so from this that paper was named. It was the real bulrush of Moses' ark. I have a piece of this paper rush which was raised in a hot-house; it is very large, a regular triangle in shape, the blossoms on branches all growing out together at the top. The green skin is tough and leathery, not at all like paper, you would say, and it is filled with a quantity of white pith. The skin was spread out on frames and written on-or rather scratched into with a sharp pen-in the curious picture-writing of ancient Egypt. Many of these writings have been found and read by scholars, and you may see them framed and glazed all along the walls of the British Museum. The spider-wort has all its flowers packed up in a sheath, and has linear leaves. CHAPTER XLIII GRASSES You are HERE, in this Endogen class, are those precious gifts the grasses, perhaps the most valuable of the whole of the vegetable creation, the food of man and beast. surprised now, for you never thought of eating grass, you never heard of any one who did, excepting Nebuchadnezzar in the time of his punishment. But what shall you think when I tell you that without grasses you would have neither bread, beer, gruel, porridge, rice, nor sugar, to say nothing of the mutton and beef, the milk, butter, and cheese, which are supplied to us by animals which live on grasses! I will give you a description which applies to every kind of grass. The root is creeping, the stem smooth, round, hollow, and jointed, the lower part consisting of leaves; long, narrow, undivided leaves, rolled up and sheathed one over the other. At each joint one of these leaves ceases to embrace the others, and hangs down, tapering off to a point, while the one next above it becomes the outside covering, and so continues till the next joint, where it, too, opens and hangs down, on the opposite side to the former one. Each joint contains a certain quantity of sweet sugary juice. The stem, properly so |