HOKTLS GUAMINEIJS WOUURNKNSla. 131 



grasses. Its nutritive powers are considerable, when com- 

 pared to other grasses affecting a similar soil. It is eaten by 

 horses, cows, and sheep. These merits, therefore, demand 

 attention, and though it is unfit, comparatively, for rich 

 permanent pasture, yet, for poor sandy, and also for poor 

 tenacious soils, where improvement in other respects cannot 

 be sufficiently effected to fit them for the production of the 

 superior grasses, the common quaking-grass will be found of 

 value. 



It flowers in the second and third weeks of June, and the 

 seed is ripe about the second week of July. 



BROMUS hiermis. Smooth awnless Brome-grass. 



Specific character: Panicle upright; spikelets linear, cy- 

 lindric, naked, awnless, or with very short awns some- 

 times, imbricated ; leaves smooth. 



Obs. — Root powerfully creeping, like common couch-grass. 

 Culms from a foot to two feet high, erect, scored, smooth. 

 Leaves broad, acuminate, smooth, dark green, mid-rib 

 whitish, and rough. Panicle from six inches to a foot 

 and more in length ; at first contracted and upright, 

 afterwards nodding. Native of Germany. Root creep- 

 ing. Perennial. 



Experiments. — At the time of flowering, the produce from 

 a black siliceous sandy loam is 12,251 lbs. per acre. 



The produce of latter-math is 8,848 lbs. per acre. 



In Germany, where this grass is a native, it grows in moist 

 pastures, orchards, and by the banks of rivers. Its root is 

 powerfully creeping, like the common couch-grass, and pos- 

 sesses the property of impoverishing the soil in as eminent a 

 degree as that grass. Its produce, when first planted on a 

 soil, is much greater than afterwards, on account of its ex- 

 hausting nature. The produce of early foliage is inconsi- 

 derable, and less nutritive than many others. To the eye it 

 produces an abundance of seed, but, in general, it is imper- 

 fectly formed, and, when sown, produces few plants in pro- 

 portion to the quantity of seed employed. The merits of 

 this grass will appear, from the above details, to be inferior 



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