countries it forms an important article of diet. Scotch bone and muscle are largely indebted to oatmeal porridge and milk, almost the only food of the sturdy Scotch peasantry.

5. Barley is extensively cultivated in Scotland, and in the Orkney, Shetland, and Faroe islands. In Western Lapland barley may be found as far as Cape North, the most northern point of the continent of Europe. It is grown in Russia, on the shores of the White Sea, beyond Archangel. But over a great part of Northern Siberia no barley will live; and as the potato has found its way into such barren districts only here and there, the country which is too far north for barley is too far north for agriculture. There lichens, roots, bark, and a few scanty fruits, offer almost the only plant-food to the nomadic population. Barley grows rapidly, and soon matures, is impatient of a baking sun, and is thus well adapted to the short summers of extreme northern latitudes.

6. But what shall be said of rice? If regard be had to the number of people it sustains, it is a more important grass than even wheat. All India and all China subsist upon it. Large quantities of rice also are grown in Italy and Spain, as well as in South Carolina, whose rice is perhaps the best in the world.

7. Maize, or Indian-corn, yields us, perhaps, the largest fruit of all the grasses. A roasting ear is certainly a very large fruit for a grass. The whole plant is the largest grass that grows in this country, at least in the North. In the South are very tall and large grasses, growing by marshes and river banks, forming the well-known canebrakes, from which are obtained the long, fine fishing-rods, of almost perfect straightness, elegantly tapering to a point, and possessed of marvelous strength and elasticity.

8. Sugar-cane, about the size of Indian-corn, and looking very much like it, also belongs to the Southern States. Its fruit, however, is nothing but little seeds, with long, white, silky hairs. In the cultivation of the sugar-cane the plants are not allowed to come to flower and fruit, but are cut down just as they begin to blossom, because then the stalk is full of sugar. In many localities the proper time for cutting is indicated by the first gnawing of the destructive rats, who know very well when the cane has reached its highest degree of sweetness. The stalks are

carried to the mill, where they are passed between rollers that press out the sweet sap, which is then boiled and left to stand to form sugar and syrup. In countries where the sugar-cane grows, it is universally eaten. Everybody sucks the juicy cane, -even the baby comes in for his share.

9. Nearly all grasses have three stamens to each little flower. There is hardly anything prettier to look at than the graceful forms of the light, bending grass, as it waves its trembling little heads of flowers in the breeze, when the threadlike stamens with their golden knobs peep out from the rows of flowers and dangle in the sunlight. Sometimes the little knobs are a delicate purple color; sometimes they are a golden yellow, which they usually are when the pollen is ripe and ready to be carried away. Then tap the grass-stem lightly, and you will see the fine dust floating off like a little cloud.

10. You can always know a grass from any other plant : it has split sheaths. These sheaths are thin, leafy tubes, inside of which is the stem. The leaves grow out of the top of the sheaths, and are always narrow, ribbon-like, running to a point. The stem goes up through the sheaths.

Some plants of the sedge family, many of which grow in marshes, are very much like grasses. They, too, have sheaths around the stem. But their sheaths are never split; on one side they are not open. Usually, too, the stems of the true grasses are hollow, but the stems of the sedges are not hollow.

11. Leaves of grass are placed in two rows up and down the stem. Some stand out from the stem all on one side of it; others all stand out on the opposite side. All grasses have their leaves in two rows, just in this way. But if you will look at any of the sedges, you will find that their leaves are placed in three rows up and down the

1. As our travelers proceeded up-stream, they were occasionally compelled to pass through tracts covered with a species of jungle-grass called "dab-grass," which not only reached above the heads of the tallest of the party, but would have done so had they been giants. Goliath or the Cyclops might have either of them stood on tiptoe in a field of this grass without being able to look over its tops.

2. The botanist was curious enough to measure some stalks of this gigantic grass, and found them full fourteen feet in height, and as thick as a man's finger near the roots! Of course, no animal except a giraffe could raise its head. over the tops of such grass as this; but there are no giraffes

in this part of the world, these long-necked creatures being confined to the continent of Africa. Wild elephants, however, are found here; and the largest of them can hide himself in the midst of this tall sward as easily as a mouse would in an English meadow.

3. But there are other animals that make their lair in the dab-grass. It is a favorite haunt both of the tiger and Indian lion; and it was not without feelings of fear that our botanical travelers threaded their way amidst its tall, cane-like culms.

You will be ready to admit that the dab-grass is a tall grass. But it is far from being the tallest in the world, or in the East Indies either. What think you of a grass nearly five times as tall? And yet in that same country such a grass exists. Yes, there is a species of "panicgrass which actually grows to the height of fifty feet, with a culm not thicker than an ordinary goose-quill. This singular species is, however, a climbing plant, growing up amidst the trees of the forest, supported by their branches, and almost reaching to their tops.

4. This panic-grass you will no doubt fancy must be the tallest grass in the world. But no. Prepare yourself to hear that there is still another kind, not only taller than this, but one that grows to the prodigious height of a hundred feet! You will guess what sort I am about to name. It could be no other than the giant bamboo. That is the tallest grass in the world.

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You know the bamboo as a cane;" but for all that it is a true grass, belonging to the natural order of grasses, the chief difference between it and many others of the same order being its more gigantic dimensions.

5. I may safely assert that in all the vegetable kingdom

there is no species or form so valuable to the human race as the grasses. Among all civilized nations bread is reckoned as the food of primary importance, so much so as to have obtained the appellation of "the staff of life;" and nearly every sort of bread is the production of a grass. Wheat, barley, oats, maize, and rice are all grasses; and so, too, is the sugar-cane, so valuable for its luxurious product. It would take up many pages of our little volume to enumerate the various species of grasses that contribute to the necessities and luxuries of mankind; and other pages might be written about species equally available for the purposes of life, but which have not yet been brought into cultivation,

6. Of all kinds of grasses, however, none possesses greater interest than the bamboo. Although not the most useful as an article of food, this noble plant serves a greater number of purposes in the economy of human life than perhaps any other vegetable in existence.

What the palm-tree of many species is to the natives of South America or tropical Africa, such is the bamboo to the inhabitants of Southern Asia and its islands. It is doubtful whether nature has conferred upon these people any greater boon than this noble plant, the light and graceful culms of which are applied by them to a multitude of useful purposes. Indeed, so numerous are the uses made of the bamboo, that it would be an elaborate work even to make out a list of them. A few of the purposes to which it is applied will enable you to judge of the valuable nature of this princely grass.

7. The young shoots of some species are cut when tender, and eaten like asparagus. The full-grown stems while green form elegant cases, exhaling a perpetual moisture, and