HORTUS GRAMFNEUS WOBURNENSIS. 195 



Society, vol. vi, first pointed out the identity of the paincun/. 

 dactylon with the doob-grass of the Hindoos. The seeds of 

 this highly celebrated grass in India, were communicated to 

 the Duke of Bedford, from the East Indies, by the Marquis 

 of Hastings. The seeds were sown in the Experimental 

 Grass Garden at Woburn Abbey, where they vegetated 

 readily, and produced plants which flowered the second year 

 from seed. These perfected seed in the month of October, and 

 the plants raised from this seed the following spring differed 

 in no respect from those the produce of the Indian seed ; 

 our figure is taken from a plant of the later sowing. A por- 

 tion of the seed was sown in the hothouse, and the plants 

 cultivated there, in order to ascertain the effects of climate 

 on the habit of the grass. Exposed in the Grass Garden, 

 and cultivated by the side of the English species, the habit 

 of the Indian plants differed from the former in the shortness 

 of the leaves, which grew nearly flat on the ground, and 

 were of a reddish brown colour, instead of the slight glaucous 

 green tint of the native English plant. The foreign plants 

 flower freely every season, but the native ones of this species 

 of grass very seldom, for during fifteen years the native plants 

 have twice, only, produced flowers. In the hothouse, the 

 Indian plants proved of a habit exactly the same as the 

 native plants in the open ground, having the leaves equally 

 as long as those of the latter, of their glaucous colour, and not 

 producing any flowering culms. This last fact is a very re- 

 markable one as connected with the long-continued effects 

 of different climates on the same species of plant. In the 

 hothouse more soluble or nutritive matter, and also more 

 vegetable or woody fibre, were afforded by this grass than 

 was afforded by the plants of it cultivated out of doors in 

 the Grass Garden. 



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

 native plant from a sandy loam, with manure, is 

 31,308 lbs. per acre. 

 The doob-grass, or plants raised from Indian seed, at the 

 time of flowering, from a sandy loam in the Grass Gar- 

 den, afforded 2,722 lbs. per acre. 

 The grass, cultivated in an artificial tropical climate in the 



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