416 FOREST CULTURE AND 
warmer countries of America, not known from any 
part of Europe or Australia. Here called the Buffalo 
grass. It is perennial, creeping, and admirably 
adapted for binding sea-sand and river - banks; also 
for forming garden-edges, and for establishing a 
grass-sward on lawns much subjected to traffic; it is, 
besides, of some pastoral value. 
Stilbocarpa polaris, Decaisne and Planchon.—Auck- 
land’s and Campbell’s islands, and seemingly, also, in 
the southern extremity of New Zealand. <A herbace- 
ous plant with long roots, which are saccharine, and 
served some wrecked people, for a lengthened period, 
as sustenance. The plant is recommended here for 
further attention, as it may prove, through culture, a 
valuable addition to the stock of culinary vegetables 
of cold countries. 
Stipa tenacissima, L.* (Macrochloa tenacissima, 
Kunth.)—The Esparto or Atocha. Spain, Portugal, 
Greece, North Africa, ascending the Sierra Nevada to 
4,000 feet. This grass has become celebrated since 
some years, having afforded already a vast quantity 
of material for British paper-mills. It is tall and pe- 
rennial, and may prove here a valuable acquisition, 
inasmuch as it lives on any kind of poor soil, occur- 
ring naturally on sand and gravel, as well as on clay- 
ey or calcareous or gypseous soil, and even on the very 
brink of the coast. But possibly the value of grasses 
of our own, allied to the atocha, may, in a like man- 
ner, become commercially established, and, mainly 
with this view, paper samples of several grass kinds 
were prepared by the writer (vide ‘* Report,-Indus- 
trial Exhibition, Melbourne, 1867’). Even in the 
scorching heat and the arid sands of the Sahara, the 
