p.19

413

thus scalded the culms are to be spread out on a grass plat to bleach; by
turning them once a day, the bleaching is generally effected in seven or
eight days. According to my experience, the bleaching may be effected
in a much shorter space of time. Instead of ten minutes, the culms are
suffered to remain in the scalding water from one to two hours; they are
then spread out on the grass and regularly moistened as they become
dry, and turned once a day for two days: after this it is taken up and
washed clean from dust, &c. It is then in a moist state placed in a close
vessel and subjected to the fumes of burning sulphur for two hours.
This has been found sufficient to bleach the straw in the most perfect
manner." *

The Vegetable Kingdom consists of two grand divisions, one (Phaenogamia)
having flowers, with at least the essential organs of stamens and
pistils, and producing seed which contains an embryo; the other (Cryptogamia)
destitute of flower, and with seeds containing no embryo.

The Phaenogamous, or flowering plants, are again divided into two
classes; one with stems formed of bark, wood, and pith, the wood increasing
from year to year by layers formed on the exterior, (hence
called Exogens); the leaves are net-veined, the embryo with two or more
opposite cotyledons or lobes. The other class of flowering plants, to
which the grasses belong, have stems not arranged in regular layers; ^1
the growth is from the centre (hence called Endogens); the leaves are
mostly furnished with parallel veins, and sheathing at the base, not
toothed or notched; the embryo with a single cotyledon.

The grasses, (Gramineae,) are those Endogenous Phaengams, with
stems (culms) mostly hollow, closed at the joints, with leaves alternate,
apparently sessile, their sheaths clasping the stem, and slit open on the
side opposite the blade down to the next joint: the flowers, with glumes
or bracts, arranged in little groups or spikelets. By these simple characters
any true grass may be known.

The graminae are chiefly herbaceous; their roots fibrous, though often
growing from a rhizoma, or underground stem, which is creeping and
branched; the sheaths are often extended above the leaves into a kind

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* Sinclair, Hort. Gram. Woburnensis, p. 427.
^1 See plate XI., figure 3, which represents a cross section through the culm of phleum
pratense, as seen with the aid of the microscope, and shows the endoginous structure.