304 
than a foot high. Our species was formerly of great repute 
among stockmen in the central and northern parts of its range as 
a winter forage plant. Much of the credit given to it belongs, 
however, to species of Bowteloua, especially to B. hirsuta and B. 
oligostachya. Jt usually neighbors closely with those grasses, 
which are regarded by many ranchmen as merely forms of it. 
While doubtless a very nutritious grass, its manner of life adds 
very much to its value. It has a way of sending its roots down 
ten or fifteen feet, which, combined with its stoloniferous charac- 
ter and its numerous curling linear leaves, enables the plant to 
live and thrive under most unfavorable climatic conditions. Nat- 
urally almost hay, it readily cures under the dry, hot winds into 
a valuable fodder for the wild deer and the wild buffalo, as well 
as for their successors, the hardly less wild steers of the cattle- 
men. Farther east and south, it largely yields place to more 
luxuriant grasses. 
The history of our subject is interesting from the fact that, 
for a long time after its discovery, what has hitherto been regard- 
ed as its true character, was unknown to botanists. Nearly sev- 
enty five years ago, Nuttall discovered the staminate form and 
named it Sesleria dactyloides. In 1855 Steudel named the pistil- 
late form, collected by Drummond, Axtephora axilliflora—no 
botanists at that time recognizing the relationship of the two 
forms. In 1859 the late Dr. George Engelmann, of precious 
memory to botanists, received what he considered a mere sprout 
of the plant, a form bearing both staminate and pistillate flowers, 
but borne on distinct stalks proceeding from different parts of the 
same rootstock. The practiced eye and judgment of Dr. Engel- 
mann saw at once that Sesleria dactyloides and Antephora axillt- 
Jlora were forms of the same plant. Supposing that he had be- 
fore him a dicecious grass so distinct from all others as to posses 
generic characters, he founded a new genus and named it Bu- 
chloe, a contraction of Bubalo, Greek for the Old World buffalo, 
and chloa, grass. 
Great and important facts and principles in science and phi- 
losophy often lie around loosely, and cuffed and are kicked about 
for years, sometimes for centuries, because great men, strongly in- 
tent upon another and more remote object, overlook that which 
