1094 



years since on the loose sandy beach of Studland Bay, Dorsetshire, 

 by Dr. T. Bell Salter, and where I have myself gathered it in plenty. 

 Its small size and insignificant aspect may occasion its being over- 

 looked or slighted by all but the experienced botanist, whose interest 

 is not exclusively engaged by magnitude or beauty of form and co- 

 lour. This little, wiry, unpromising grass is dispersed over a large 

 part of the warmer regions of the earth, and has obtained much cele- 

 brity for its nutritive properties, in both hemispheres. It is the Dur- 

 rah-grass of India, the Crab-grass and Bermuda-grass of North 

 America and the West Indies, and in all these countries is esteemed 

 valuable pasture for cattle. The truth is, it is only deserving of re- 

 gard in climes where our fine, succulent, meadow grasses will not 

 succeed, and from its power of resisting the fiercest heat and drought 

 of summer, in the sandy soil on which better herbage cannot grow. 



Spartina stricta. In muddy salt-marsh ground along the coast, 

 and at the mouths of rivers and creeks, always in the ooze of spots 

 wholly or partially overflowed at high water ; abundantly in most parts 

 of the Isle of Wight, and of the opposite mainland, where mud-flats 

 abound. Plentifully along the Wootton River, below Wootton Bridge. 

 Shores of the Medina above Cowes, frequent. Salt marshes along the 

 Yar, at Yarmouth, and near the shore at Norton. Newtown salt- 

 marshes, in profusion. By the Southampton Water, below the town, 

 and muddy shores of the Itchen River, near its junction with the 

 Southton Water. I think I have remarked it in Hayling and Portsea 

 Islands, but have lost or mislaid a quantity of notes made there a year 

 or two back. Shore at Lower Exbury, in plenty. About Portsmouth, 

 very abundant, Dr. Macreight, Man. of Brit. Bot. Between Southton 

 and Millbrook, Winch in New Bot. Guide. Cams shore (Fareham), 

 Mr. W. L. Notcutt ! and doubtless in many other places along the 

 coast. If it be not allowable to tax Nature with downright ugliness 

 in any of her productions, it must be admitted that Spartina stricta 

 has received fewer embellishing touches from her creative hand than 

 most other members of a natural family in which artistic skill and 

 finish are signally displayed. Our Spartina is, to call it by the 

 mildest term, a very plain grass ; its dwarfish stature, stiff; erect, rigid 

 habit, totally devoid of all grace; its pale, sickly colour, a dirty, yel- 

 lowish or brownish green, with sometimes a tinge of lurid purple, and 

 made more dingy still by incrustations of slime and mud, from which 

 it is seldom free, — when to ail these defects is added the rank smell 

 which distinguishes all the species of Spartina, we are forced to 

 assign to the Twin-spiked Cord-grass the very lowest station amongst 



