AND OTHER FORAGE PLANTS. 51 



ish Possessions throughout to Missouri Territory, Nebraska, 

 Kansas and New Mexico, down to Texas and North Mexico/ 

 and w r ell known to herdsmen and hunters under the name of 

 Buffalo grass. I saw it in 1869 in Texas, growing abundantly 

 a few miles from Corpus Christi, and in the prairies near In- 

 dianola; and it was there called 'Meskit grass. 7 It was represent- 

 ed as one of their best pasture grasses for their herds of cattle, 

 nutritious and always preferred by animals to any other. 



"The grass has the peculiarity (possessed by very few other 

 grasses) of bearing its male and female flowers on separate plants, 

 (and called in botany dioecious.) 



"The male plants are the largest, growing from six to twelve 

 inches high, and being most conspicuous, are those most fre- 

 quently seen and noticed. They grow in dense tufts, and from 

 these send out their shoots. 



"The true Mesket grass is Bouteloua hirsuta, growing also in 

 the Western Prairies." 



The buffalo grass certainly should be more widely cultivated 

 on our southern waste lands, lawns, and pastures. It is often 

 confounded with 



BOUTELOUA, Mesquit Grass. 



Three species of this grass grow in the west, and are known 

 by various names, as gramma, (not gama from which it is total- 

 ly different) mesquit, ^ith the many ways of spelling, etc. The 

 bristly mesquit grows abundantly in Texas in tufts from 8 to 20 

 inches high. It is a valuable grass and has been experimented 

 with in many parts of the south with gratifying results. Per- 

 haps the other two species have also been tried under the general 

 name of mesquit. But this name has been applied to a number 

 of other grasses and caused no little confusion. Many specimens 

 of so called mesquit grass have been sent to me from Texas and 

 from several other states, (the seeds having been first obtained 

 from Texas) and in every instance it has proved to be Holcus 

 la,natus, velvet, or soft meadow grass. And it is this velvet 

 grass, naturalized in Texas, that is generally cultivated in the 

 southern States under the name mesquit. 



EATONIA. 



1. E. PENNSYLVANIA. Eaton's Grass. 



The Eatonias are slender, erect, tufted, perennial grasses with 

 narrow leaves, and small, smooth, shining spikelets of pale flow- 

 ers in a panicle. In this species the panicle is slender, loose ; the 

 two- or three-flowerd spikelets ; scattered on the slender bran- 

 ches ; stems one or two feet high, flowering in April and found 



