522 The Natural History of British Grasses. 



of the grass may be estimated from tlie fact that scarcely six 

 inches of space occurs without its occupants of one or more of 

 the dry sapless culms of the C. cristatus. Now this park is con- 

 stantly stocked with deer, Southdown sheep, horses, and oxen, by 

 which the general turf is kept well cropped down, and yet no 

 dead culms of any other grass will, as a rule, be found to prevail. 

 Let it therefore be borne in mind that this is different from a 

 meadow where the culms may become hard and woody before 

 cattle are turned into it : they are always here, and keep every 

 other grass from flowering but the one in question ; it is there- 

 fore quite evident that here at least the C. cristatus is not a 

 favourite with deer or Southdowns. 



Perhaps, however, it was Shiclair's very observation of the 

 quantity of culms in Woburn Park that led him to conclude that it 

 formed so great a mass of the herbage ; but if we bear in mind 

 how very small and wiry these culms usually are, and how short 

 in the leaf are the tufts of grass by which they are accompanied, 

 we shall have reason to conclude that after all C. cristatus may 

 there form but a small proportion of the herbage : at all events, 

 we may safely determine that, if the grass in its young state was 

 so favourite a pasture, it would, like others, be kept from grow- 

 ing culms by constant depasturing, but the grass in question 

 seems all the more because even the young shoots are never 

 cropped. From these observations we feel bound to conclude 

 that the C. cristatus is both a poor hay and pasture grass, 

 and neither in quantity nor quality of either worthy a place in 

 a good meadow ; and though it is true that it improves vastly 

 under liberal treatment, yet the culms are left even in the lov/- 

 lands on depasturing, and it fortunately happens that improve- 

 ment of a pasture will cause the dying out of the greater por- 

 tion of the grass in question, as it is essentially one of the poor 

 pasture which cannot maintain its ground on the advance of other 

 and more important species. The culms are gathered in quantity 

 for straw-plaits, for which they are well adapted both from their 

 fineness and strength of fibre. 



*** Spikelets (locustce) loith three or more perfect floiuers. 

 f Sjjikelets forming/ bilateral s^nkes. 



'H.ORDEJJM—Jlorets in threes, of which the central one is 

 fertile, the lateral ones usually imperfect ; glumel incor- 

 porated with the seed. 



1. H. syloaticum — wood lyme-grass — wood barley ; spike 

 smooth, upright ; spikelets three-flowered ; florets with a long 

 awn ; leaves flat and drooping. — P. 



2. //. murimun — wall barley; spike about two inches long; 



