File:The British grasses and sedges (1858) (14577555977).jpg

Identifier: britishgrassesse00prat (find matches)
Title: The British grasses and sedges
Year: 1858 (1850s)
Authors: Pratt, Anne, 1806-1893
Subjects: Botany Grasses
Publisher: London, Society for promoting Christian knowledge
Contributing Library: University of British Columbia Library
Digitizing Sponsor: University of British Columbia Library

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er, and one sees large patches lodged, and beatenfiat, and spoiled. Men go out in boats to shoot them,and kill hundreds night after night, yet these bold birdsstill come to the reed-ronds; and as the fox lurks thereto seize them, he also tramples down a large number ofthe reeds. Many of the reed-crops are now altogether destroyedby the improvement of the land by drainage, andmillions of their waving plumes have disappeared beforethe railroads, and other inventions of recent times.Now and then, as we read in some old book, we arereminded how much more abundant these and otheracjuatic plants must have been in the earlier ages ofEngland. In the Anglo-Saxon version of the Life ofGuthlac, Hermit of Crowland, first printed about tenyears since from a MS, in the Cottonian Library, andapparently written before a.d, 749, we find continualallusion to these reeds, and see how the fens, withtheir plants, overspread land from which they have nowbeen tX()(.lled, to make May for houses and fields of
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J iipitioiri- SKA i.vMi; oiiy\ss. KItithis HTPnarius,3 Il-NliULOirs S.l.r.. vvfioK )i/\kl,i:Y, lluHpum nrlvat icuin 4( I Mi:/\iii)vv n . II ,.r„U.ns.- r. wAi.i, II, II niunnum o SF./v Sim. n . M. iiiitrilltiiiiin BRITISH GRASSES AND SEDGES. 119 waving corn. There is, in Britain, says the ohlwriter, Fehx of Crowland, a fen of iuiniense size,which begins from the river Granta, not far from thecity of Grantchester. There are immense marshes, nowa black pool of water, now foul running streams, andalso many islands, reeds, and thickets ; and with manifoldwindings, wide and long, it continues up to the NorthSea. No wonder that Crowland, which was in themidst of this wilderness, was described as a place of manifold horrors and of loneliness, so that no man couldendure it; and no w^onder that the hermit who went tolive there had his home among reeds and rushes, orthat some of the incidents recorded by his chroniclersoccurred in the mere, amidst the bed of reeds. The reed-grass is commonly c

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