getting the effect upon canvas. Of the million blades of grass no two
are of the same shade.

Pluck a handful and spread them out side by side and this is at once
evident. Nor is any single blade the same shade all the way up. There
may be a faint yellow towards the root, a full green about the middle,
at the tip perhaps the hot sun has scorched it, and there is a trace of
brown. The older grass, which comes up earliest, is distinctly different
in tint from that which has but just reached its greatest height, and in
which the sap has not yet stood still.

Under all there is the new grass, short, sweet, and verdant, springing
up fresh between the old, and giving a tone to the rest as you look down
into the bunches. Some blades are nearly grey, some the palest green,
and among them others, torn from the roots perhaps by rooks searching
for grubs, are quite white. The very track of a rook through the grass
leaves a different shade each side, as the blades are bent or trampled
down.

The stalks of the bennets vary, some green, some yellowish, some brown,
some approaching whiteness, according to age and the condition of the
sap. Their tops, too, are never the same, whether the pollen clings to
the surface or whether it has gone. Here the green is almost lost in
red, or quite; here the grass has a soft, velvety look; yonder it is
hard and wiry, and again graceful and drooping. Here there are bunches
so rankly verdant that no flower is visible and no other tint but dark
green; here it is thin and short, and the flowers, and almost the turf
itself, can be seen; then there is an array of bennets (stalks which
bear the grass-seed) with scarcely any grass proper.