290 HORTUS GRAMINEUS WOBURNENSIS. 



and horses eat it, and that sheep are not fond of it. Crows stock 

 it up for the sake of the larvae of some species of tipulse which they 

 find at the root. 



It flowers in the first and second weeks of July, and the seed is 

 ripe about the first week of August. 



CYNODON dactylon. Creeping Dog's-tooth Grass. 

 Durva, Dub, or Doob-grass of the Hindoos. 

 Panicum dactylon. Engl. Bot. 850; Fl. Brit. 67. Creeping 



panic-grass. 



Digitaria stolonifera. Fl. Ger. i. 165. Creeping finger-grass. 

 C. dactylon. Br. Pr. 187. 

 Specific character : Spikes four or five, crowded together ; corolla 



smooth. Sm. Engl. Fl. i. p. 95. 



Obs. The roots are tough and creeping, almost woody, with 

 smooth fibres ; stems also creeping to a great extent, matted, 

 round, jointed, leafy, very smooth ; leaves tapering, sharp 

 pointed, ribbed, hairy, a little glaucous, with long striated 

 smooth sheaths, and a hairy stipula ; spikes four or five, linear ; 

 flowers purplish, shining, ranged in two close alternate rows ; 

 the corolla is longer than the calyx, very much compressed, 

 opposite. See Sm. Engl. Fl. 



Refer. Fig. 1. Corolla, natural size. 2. Floret, magnified. 

 3. Calyx, magnified. 4. Germen, and feathery Stigmas. 

 5. A seed, the natural size. 6. A seed, magnified. 

 A. B. Lambert, Esq. in the Transactions of the Linnean Society, 

 vol. vi. first pointed out the identity of the Panicum dactylon with 

 the doob-grass of the Hindoos. The seeds of this highly cele- 

 brated grass in India, were communicated to the Duke of Bed- 

 ford, from the East Indies, by the Marquess of Hastings. The 

 seeds were sown in the Experimental Grass Garden at Woburn 

 Abbey, where they vegetated readily, and produced plants which 

 flowered the second year from seed. These perfected seed in the 

 month of October, and the plants raised from this seed the 

 following spring differed in no respect from those the produce of 

 the Indian seed ; our figure is taken from a plant of the later 

 sowing. A portion of the seed was sown in the hothouse, and the 

 plants cultivated there in order to ascertain the effects of climate 

 on the habit of the grass. Exposed in the Grass Garden, and culti- 

 vated by the side of the English species, the habit of the Indian 

 plants differed from the former in the shortness of the leaves, 



