On the Awns of NEPAUL BARLEY (Hordeum celeste, vars. trifurcatum 
and egiceras), by the Rev. J. S. Henstow, M.A., Prof. of Botany in 
the University of Cambridge. 
In the London Botanical Journal, vol. vi. p. 216, Sir Wm. Hooker 
has noticed the ** Thibetian Barley," a variety of Hordeum celeste, and 
has there stated it to be my intention to send him a notice of the pecu- 
lir structure of the awns in another sub-variety of the same race, 
known by the name of Nepaul Barley. Last autumn (1847) I was 
comparing a few ears of this curious Barley, received from Miss Moles- 
worth, with the account and figure given of it by Seringe in his Céréales 
Européenes, and observed some facts which he had not noticed. 
The appearances before me seemed to encourage the idea that the 
monstrous condition of the awns was owing to an effort made by 
the plant to develope, upon them, three of the associated single- 
flowered spikelets characteristic of this genus. The singularity of such 
aun ee was s. aio inereased by the glume-like scales of these 
l, or inverted position ; whilst the 
awn itself was often terminated abruptly, or was much distorted, beyond 
the spot from which they originated. On mentioning this to Sir Wm. 
Hooker, he showed me a drawing he had made of an awn of this Barley 
several years ago, in which were represented the same glume-like 
Eo developed as in some of the specimens I had been examining. 
waited till I should possess a better opportunity of following up this 
bna upon fresh specimens, which I hoped to raise from the 
seeds of those ears I had examined. In plants grown in my own garden 
during this summer (1848) I readily detected both stamens and pistils, 
in a rudimentary state, among the glume-like scales upon the awns. 
But I have had a still better opportunity afforded me, by plants grown 
in the Kew Gardens, of tracing the phenomenon to its true cause. 
I have made drawings of many of the numerous forms which the awns 
presented, and (on Plates IT. and III.) I have arranged a selection 
m them in a sequence that will serve to illustrate the idea I have 
formed of the cause which has operated in producing this singular 
monstrosity. In Plate II. fig. 1, 2, 3, are represented (of about the 
natural size) a few of the more prominent differences which the awns as- 
sume in the three associated spikelets of the inflorescence of this kind of 
VOL. I. F 
