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ON THE EUKOPEAN SPECIES OF FESTUCA. 

 By F. Townsend, M.A., F.L.S. 



A HASTY glance at the earlier pages of Prof. Hackel's lately 

 published ' Moiiographia Festucarum Enropaearum' "' might give the 

 reader a false impression of the character of the work. He would 

 find the first sixty pages of descriptive matter teeming with the 

 oft-repeated terms, "subspecies," "variety," " subvariety " ; he 

 would see Festuca ovina divided into nine subspecies, and the first 

 subspecies into eight varieties, and he might well suppose the writer 

 to be a disciple of the Jordan school ; but a careful perusal of the 

 preface and introduction would soon convince him that Prof. 

 Hackel is a disciple of the newer school of evolutionists, who does 

 not neglect to pay the closest attention to, and weigh the evidence 

 of, minute variation, while he recognises the inherent power given 

 by the Creator to produce stable forms ; and the thanks of the 

 systematic botanist, as well as the student of biology, are due to 

 Prof. Hackel for giving us the results of his most careful investi- 

 gation of the genus Festuca. It is not everyone wdio is content to 

 devote so much time to the elucidation of so small a group, but 

 the time so applied, in the hands of a competent investigator, is 

 sui*e to be repaid by the discovery of many interesting facts and 

 laws which, though not necessarily true when applied to other 

 forms, are yet lights to guide us in all futm-e investigation. The 

 Professor seeks to do for the genus Festuca w^hat Prof. Babington 

 and Dr. Focke have done for the genus Eubus, and what other 

 botanists have done in the same direction for other variable and 

 difficult genera. 



There are in the genus Festuca, as in many other genera, some 

 forms which, within certain limits, aj)pear to be indued with large 

 powers to vary ; such groups are presented in Festuca ovina, rubra, 

 and varia ; and the author seeks to arrange the members of these 

 systematically, and to extricate them from the web of confusion 

 which various botanists have spun over them. For this purpose 

 he has introduced characters which have not hitherto been made 

 use of; but, as I purpose to review the work in considerable detail, 

 I will not anticipate the opinions and conclusions of the author, 

 but will take them somewhat in the order in which they are given 

 in the monograph. 



A. — Morphology and Histology. 



All the species of Festuca are perennial. New shoots — inno- 

 vationes (DC, Theor. element.) — are produced from the lower 

 internodes of the rhizoma or rootstock, and whether the latter be 

 creeping or caBspitose depends upon the number, length, and 

 direction of these shoots. The growth of the axis of the shoot, 

 when in the bud, is either apogeotropic, or diageotropic, or it may 

 be geotropic, though this mode of growth is found but in two 



* ' Monograpbia Festucarum Eurupgearum,' (Kassel and Berlin, I883j. 



