HORTUS GRAMINEUS WOBURNENSIS. 99 



pastures. From the above details, its produce is not very 

 great, nor its nutritive qualities considerable. The nutritive 

 matter it affords from its leaves (the properties of which are 

 of more importance to be known than those of the culms, 

 for a permanent pasture grass), contains proportionally more 

 bitter extractive than what is contained in the nutritive 

 matters of the grasses with which it is more generally com- 

 bined in natural pastures, and which have just now been 

 mentioned. This latter circumstance is the chief claim it 

 has to a place in the composition of the produce of rich 

 pasture land ; but more particularly, if the land be elevated 

 and without good shelter, this grass becomes more valuable, 

 as it thrives better under such circumstances than most other 

 grasses, and sheep eat it as readily as they do most others. 

 The seed is very small and light ; but it vegetates freely if 

 sown in the autumn, or not too early in the spring. I have 

 sown the seeds of this grass in almost every month of the 

 year; and, after making due allowance for the state of the 

 weather, the third week in May, and the first week of 

 August to September, were evidently the best. 



It flowers in the first and often in the second week of 

 July, and ripens the seed in the beginning of August. 



HOLCUS lanatus. Woolly Soft-grass. 



Specific character : Root fibrous ; calyx woolly ; lower 

 floret perfect, awnless, upper with an arched awn ; 

 leaves downy on both sides. 



Fig. 1. Calyx magnified, showing the dotted, hoary 

 valves, the innermost broadest. 2. The two florets, 

 shorter than the calyx. 3. Germen and slender- fea- 

 thered stigmas. 



Obs. — Practical farmers often mistake this grass for the 

 creeping-rooted soft-grass; I have therefore given a 

 figure of the latter in the next following page, for the 

 convenience of comparison, otherwise it belongs to 

 another division of the subject, that is, grasses natural 

 to sandy soils. The male, or unisexual floret, contains 

 one pistil ; the germen, or rudiment of the future seed, 



H 2 



