y interesting.

There are thousands of kinds of grasses, shrubs, and trees, scattered
over the different parts of the earth, and the larger portion of them
are in some way useful to mankind.

In speaking of grasses, we are apt to think only of the grass in the
meadows, which is the food for our horses and cattle; but there are
other kinds of grasses which are just as important to man as the grass
of the meadow is to the beast. These are oats, rye, barley, wheat, corn,
and others, all of which belong to the grass family.

Perhaps it appears strange to you to hear wheat and corn called grass,
and you ask how can that be.

In the first place, all plants that have the same general form and
method of growth, belong to the same family.

Now, if you will pull up a stalk of grass and a stalk of wheat or rye
and compare them, you will find that they are alike in all important
respects.

The roots of each look like a little bundle of strings or fibers, and
are therefore called fibrous; the stalks you will find jointed and
hollow; and the leaves are long and narrow, tapering to a point at their
ends.

Then, if you examine the seeds, you will see that they are placed near
together and form what we call an ear or head, as in an ear of corn, or
a head of wheat.

This same general form or structure applies to every one of the plants
belonging to the grass family; and in this family are included all the
different kinds of canes and reeds that grow in swamps and marshy
places, as well as the bamboo of the tropics.

Shrubs are those plants which have woody stems and branches. They are
generally of small size, rarely reaching over twenty feet in height.
Small shrubs are usually called bushes.

In this class of plants, the branches generally start close to the
ground, and in some cases, a little below the surface of the ground,
rising and spreading out in all directions.

The common currant bushes, blackberry bushes, and rose bushes which we
see in gardens, are shrubs.

So also are grape-vines, honeysuckles, ivy, and all other creeping
vines. These are called climbing plants, because little tendrils or
claspers which grow out of their branches, wind around and fasten
themselves to any thing in their way.

Trees are the largest and strongest of all plants.

They have woody stems or trunks, and branches. These branches do not, as
in shrubs, start close to the ground, but at some distance above, from
which height they exten