Excerpt from Hortus Gramineus Woburnensis, Or an Account of the Results of Experiments on the Produce and Nutritive Qualities of Different Grasses: Used as the Food of the More Valuable Domestic Animals, Instituted by John, Duke of Bedford, Illustrated With Forty-Five Plate, Fifth Edition, to Which Is Added, the Weeds of Agriculture

Among the numerous tribes of vegetables which clothe and embellish the earth, no one is more interesting nor more extensively useful than the natural order Gramineæ, or family of grasses. In every temperate region the grasses form the general covering of the naked soil, and collectively constitute that verdant turf which yields the most nutritious pasturage, as well as forage for our flocks and herds, for the pampered steed and for the labouring steer.

Although the grasses are most luxuriant and also most abundant in the temperate latitudes, they are also distributed over tropical countries, and though those warm climates present no constantly green hills, or valleys "thick with waving corn, " yet such of the grasses as are indigenous there, are of the greatest importance to the half-civilized inhabitants.

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