218 
three or four miles on. It has quite altered the appearance of 
Garrison and the intervening country, and the horses and mules 
are being turned out to graze on it. I have made a small stack 
of hay on ‘ Wide-a-wake,’ to test it as such, and many tous 
might have been put up if we had known it was coming and had 
been prepared for it. 
‘Whether the ee is a perennial and really useful remains 
to be seen, but the animals are extremely fond of it now. It is 
seeding freely, and should it grow again at any future time after 
favourable rains a large amount of hay might be made. It is 
climbing up the craters Basal turning them from red to green hills. 
“IT am posting with this a small piece of the grass as a 
specimen, and if you would kindly ask the Kew authorities how 
they class it I should be most pleased to hear their decision. 
‘* The specimen is a short piece, but where the ground is better 
it grows 3 feet in height. It also grows on the brackish places , 
which most things object. to 
The grass has been iilericed as Enneapogon mollis, Lehm. 
(also hn as Pa a bates Kunth). It had not been 
recorde Serenata befo ut was known to occur on the 
coast of eels and in Great Wawageslond, from which region it 
extends through the Kalahari Desert to Bechuanaland and 
Griqualand. Tt also inhabits the Sudan, parts of Abyssinia, 
Eritrea, and Somaliland and has been collected in Madagascar: 
and once in the Punjab. It appears to be annual, as pointed 
out by Chiovenda (in Ann. Istit. Bot. Roma, viii. 358, sub 
Pappophorum abyssinicum), but the occasional presence 
of tardily flowering innovation shoots sometimes gives it 
the appearance of a perennial. It is a typical desert 
grass. It grows in the palm groves of Loanda Island, 
according to Welwitsch (Cat. Afr. Pl. Welw. ii. 229, under the 
name of £. a 
abyssinicus, es in dense masses and covers wide 
great fluctuation as to size according to the fertility or sterility 
of the soil and the water supply. Particularly robust specimens. 
collected in the Hissar District in the Punjab in 1886—possibly 
as a casual introduction—were described as a new species, 
Pappophorum robustum, Hook. f. The dispersal of the grains 
is much aided by the extreme lightness and the feathery awns 0 
the florets, which on maturity become detached and, with the 
grain tightly enclosed in them, may be carried over wide 
y would readily adhere. They would cling equally well to 
clothing or packing materials, and thus be dispersed by human 
agency. Once established under suitable conditions there seems 
to be no reason why the grass should not _reproduce itself 
Yo pre 
tion concerning the economic value of the erass is available, but 
there is little souk that it would be a valuable asset in any avi 
country. It may be remarked in supnort of this contention that 
