1076 



pearance of the species, with but a slight tendency in one or two in- 

 dividuals to inordinate elongation of the peduncles. 



Digitaria humifusa. In cultivated fields, in a sandy soil ; very 

 rare ? Amongst corn (wheat and barley), potatoes, clover and turnips, 

 on the sandy alluvial gravel on the north side of Christchurch, within 

 a mile of the town, on the Wimborne road, in vast profusion, covering 

 the soil in patches of large extent, as well as growing in a more scat- 

 tered manner, Aug. 21, 1850. I traced the species, in quantity that 

 was truly immense, from some allotment gardens in which it first 

 caught my eyes, into all the neighbouring fields, in which, where the 

 crop had been carried, I found the stubbles filled with it in flower. 

 A farmer, seeing me gathering the grass, conducted me into his fields 

 across the road, where it was equally prevalent ; and further on I 

 found part of a large potato-field in which the Digitaria formed a per- 

 fectly close, compact turf, like a grass lawn, to the absolute exclusion 

 of every other plant, and concealment of the ground it grew upon. 

 The species is well known to the farmers and their men, but has no 

 distinctive name amongst them, being only held a kind of " poverty 

 grass," that is, a grass indicative of an extremely poor soil. I have 

 the best reason for believing that the Digitaria covers a far greater 

 space of land than I had the opportunity of looking over, and that it 

 will be found no very uncommon production of the alluvial sand or 

 gravel which prevails throughout so large a tract of south-western 

 Hants. It will likewise be detected probably in the sandy districts 

 along our eastern or Surrey border, as between Farnborough and Pe- 

 tersfield, &c. The Digitaria was accompanied by Antirrhinum Oron- 

 tium, a weed in every field and by the road-sides for miles round 

 Christchurch, and in one place by Arnoseris pusilla, till then unknown 

 to me as a plant of this county. 



\Echinocloa Crus-galli. In waste and cultivated ground, also in 

 low, moist situations, as sides of ditches, streams, &c. ; extremely 

 rare. " By a Ri volet side near Petersfield, Hampshire, Mr. Goody er," 

 Merrett, ' Pinax,' p. 56. I am not aware of any modern authority for 

 this grass in the county, in which, however, it is quite as likely to 

 grow as in any other of the southern and eastern ones. I have 

 searched the sides of the stream that runs close by Petersfield, on the 

 west of the town, having been led to suppose that it must have been 

 the one intended by Goodyer, in consequence of the substitution of the 

 definite for the indefinite article in copying Merrett's words into the 

 Synopsis of Ray, from which last work the notice has been transcribed 

 verbatim by the authors of the old ' Botanist's Guide,' and from them 



