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have met with general acceptance. As the subject is still before the 

 minds of some of our best botanists, I propose, by way of contributing 

 in some degree to its elucidation, to lay before your readers a short 

 account of all the forms which I have hitherto noticed in this district. 

 I do not, however, at all pretend that I have detected the whole of 

 the variations which may occur here, and still less that I have selected 

 all the most salient and available points of distinction between them. 



First. — Glyceria fluitans. The plants which agree in possessing 

 acute outer pales nearly thrice as long as broad, anthers about five 

 times as long as broad, and acute simply folded leaves, present the 

 following modifications : — 



a. — Branches of the fruit panicle appressed. 

 1. Anthers purple. 



(Si — Branches of the fruit panicle divaricate. 



1. Green, — anthers yellow or purple before bursting. 



2. Glaucous, — anthers pale yellow before bursting. 



Thus it will appear that colour is not at all to be relied on as a dis- 

 tinctive mark. a. is the most common of all the forms ; I do not re- 

 collect to have noticed it with pale yellow, nor the glaucous plant, /3.2, 

 with purple anthers. 



Secondly. — Glyceria plicata. Of plants which agree in having their 

 outer pales twice as long as broad, obtuse, with three nearly equal 

 teeth, and anthers about three times as long as broad, there are two 

 forms. 



a. — A plant which precisely accords with a living plant of G. pli- 

 cata which Mr. T. Moore kindly sent me, and which has flowered, 

 during the past summer, in my garden : from its agreement with this 

 plant, and with the descriptions of Babington and Koch, I take it to 

 be the typical form of Fries's plant : in this the tip of each outer pale 

 seems to reach only one-third of the way up the next floret on the 

 same side. In dried examples, for which I am indebted to Mr. Wat- 

 son and Mr. Moore, the uppermost leaf is much shorter in proportion 

 to its sheath than in the plant I shall next notice, — and I once thought 

 that this might furnish a distinction, but my Ross specimens seem to 

 prove the character too variable to be of any value. The only point 

 in which I have seen the leaves of the cultivated or wild plants differ 

 as regards plicature from those of G. fluitans, is in having their mar- 

 gins folded inward ; never at all resembling Dr. Lindley's idea of 

 " plicate " (Elements and Introduction to Botany) ; and even this 

 additional fold seems only to be found early in the season, the young 

 leaves produced towards the close of summer being much narrower 



