1096 



safely set it aside in a case so open to suspicion as the one before us. 

 Were additional stations to be discovered for S. alterniflora on our 

 own or other European coasts, where no communication was kept up 

 with America, I should feel justified in admitting it as a species com- 

 mon to both continents without hesitation, regarding the suspicious 

 nature of the Southampton habitat in the light of a mere coincidence; 

 as it is, reason, I think, demands the withholding the full rights of abo- 

 riginality from a plant that betrays its exotic descent in so palpable 

 a way as this. I do not understand how those who are so forward to 

 doubt the indigenous claims of many a strictly European plant in 

 Britain, can consistently pass an acknowledged and almost exclu- 

 sively American one into the list of indubitable natives, as is nega- 

 tively done in our standard botanical text-books by the omission of 

 the usual symbols of distrust. As to the way by which this grass may 

 have been conveyed hither from America, a few of the creeping roots 

 accidentally taken on board a trading vessel, with ballast or freight, 

 would retain their vitality long enough to vegetate when thrown out 

 upon the muddy shores of a tide-river like the Itchen, and would 

 afterwards propagate the species by the runners they send out, for 

 neither this nor our native species, S. stricta, perfect seed, at least ha- 

 bitually and plentifully. 



S. alterniflora is a valuable grass, and notwithstanding the fetid 

 odour it has in common with the rest of the genus, affords grateful 

 and nutritive food for cattle. I had already pointed out its practical 

 application to purposes of rural economy by the people of Southamp- 

 ton in my memoir above alluded to, when I was both surprised and 

 gratified to find during my late tour in the United States that it was 

 used in that country just in the same way as in our own. At South- 

 ampton it is regularly cut down by the poorer classes, and employed 

 by them in lieu of straw or reeds for thatching out-houses, cattle- 

 sheds, &c, and more extensively for litter, and subsequently as ma- 

 nure ;* horses and pigs, I am told, eat it greedily ; and for all these 

 purposes it is much sought after, so that hardly an accessible patch is 

 suffered to remain uncut by the end of September.f As fodder, it 



* A labouring man with whom I conversed, in 1836, on the uses of this Spartina, 

 assured me he remembered it in its present station upwards of twenty years ; had for- 

 merly employed it in thatching a part of his own premises, and found it outlast two 

 courses of straw. The people here know it only by the common name of " sedge." 



f Elliott says of S. glabra (S. alterniflora) : — " This plant is greedily eaten by 

 horses and cattle. It is remarkable for a strong rancid and peculiar smell, affecting 

 the breath, the milk, butter, and even the flesh of the cattle that feed upon it. It 



