1040 



meadow ground near the Wilderness, and I think not uncommon. 

 This form, which may be the one slightly alluded to in the second 

 edition of ' Babington's Manual,' under the present species, I at first 

 took for C. teretiuscula, but could not make it quite agree with the 

 original description of that species by Goodenough, in the * Linnean 

 Transactions.' C. teretiuscula has indeed always been to myself an 

 obscure and ill-defined plant, possibly from never having seen it 

 growing or in a living state, but I cannot avoid remarking here that 

 in description, the dried specimens, and plates, it bears a suspiciously 

 near resemblance to C. paniculata. The description in the Manual 

 of C. teretiuscula, paradoxa, and paniculata, are not such as to in- 

 crease confidence in their distinctness as species, or to enable the 

 tyro, or those not practically acquainted with the three, to discrimi- 

 nate between them with certainty. In dealing with these plants in 

 the normal state of each, some difficulty, I apprehend, will be found 

 in obtaining characters of sufficient fixity and importance to satisfy 

 the doubts of a great many, doubts naturally much strengthened by 

 learning the existence of such an awkward-sounding " intermediate," 

 betwixt C. teretiuscula and paradoxa, as the C. Pseudo-paradoxa of 

 Gibson (C. Ehrhartiana of Hoppe, and C. teretiuscula j3. Ehrhartiana 

 of second edition of the Manual). My own variety /3., mentioned above, 

 is very probably identical with this last, but if so, is, I am fully per- 

 suaded, a mere form of C. paniculata, of smaller, more contracted 

 growth, perhaps even a young state of the whole plant, which at a pe- 

 riod further advanced would become stouter, taller, and more cespi- 

 tose, and with a more expanded panicle. Sir Wm. Hooker, who 

 is justly sceptical of the clams of C. teretiuscula as a species, 

 moreover, observes, "The C. paradoxa of continental writers appears 

 to be almost intermediate between them" (teretiuscula and paniculata), 

 and whoever will be at the trouble of comparing the descriptions of these 

 three plants and dried specimens of the same, must, I imagine, feel 

 some scruple in keeping them distinct. Dr. Boott, the best autho- 

 rity, perhaps, at the present day for the Carices, as having made this 

 interesting genus an object of peculiar study, and possessing, pro- 

 bably, the most complete collection of the species in existence, speaks 

 of the line on the convex side of the perigyne, in C. teretiuscula and 

 paniculata, as only " sometimes winged" (Hook. Brit. Fl. 5th. edit, 

 p. 425.) In the specimens of ripe fruit of C. paniculata, in the carpo- 

 logical collection I have been for some year forming of British 

 plants, I find no such winged ridge on the back or convex surface of 

 the perigyne, but at most an obtuse, often evanescent ridge, along the 



