GUINEA GRASS {PANIC UM MAXIMUM) : ITS 

 HISTORY, CULTIVATIOX. AND VALUE. 



By L. A. BERNAYS, 



(Past President!. 

 (Corresponding Member of the Royal HoRTicrLTURAL Society of Enoland). 



[Bead before the Ilojial Societtj of Queensland, June 12, 1891.] 



Unlike the subject of my last paper, I am speaking to you 

 to-niglit of a plant ^ybich has been for some years in 

 Queensland, having — if my recollection serves me aright — 

 been introduced through the instrumentality of that eminent 

 promoter of economic botany, the late Dr. Schomburghk, of 

 South Australia. It is to be seen in cultivation here and there 

 all along our coast, but only here and there ; and it is because 

 its value is not sufficiently known that I ask again to be allowed 

 to interrupt the course of purely scientific papers at our meetings, 

 by dealing with a subject belonging to the realm of cultural 

 industry. Were this colony older and the industries pertaining 

 to the products of cultivation more numerous and better 

 developed, the value of a mere fodder plant might 

 better be left to a farmers' society to deal with, rather 

 than to a learned body like ours, founded as it is upon the type 

 of older and still more learned bodies elseAvhere. But our 

 colony is comparatively young, and our farmers have still to 

 learn the advantage of banding together for the interchange of 

 experience and information ; so that subjects such as that 

 before us must be neglected (unless dealt with through the 

 unsatisfactory medium of a newspaper) if they are not admitted 

 to a place in the transactions of this Society. 



Guinea Grass is a native of Tropical Africa, whence it was 

 introduced into the West Indies in the year 1774 by mere 

 accident and in a somewhat curious manner. A cage full of 



