220 CORD-GKASS 



cord-grass, which some botanists distinguish as species. 

 Both of these are found on the Hampshire coast, the 

 kind known as Spartina alterniflora being the most 

 luxuriant. Birds of many kinds delight in the seeds ; 

 despite its rank and disagreeable smell, cattle eat it 

 greedily, and, so long ago as 1836, Dr. Bromfield stated 

 that "it is regularly mown at the end of September, 

 at which time large quantities may be seen lying on 

 the shore to dry, previous to carting. Hardly a single 

 accessible patch, either on the upper or the lower 

 station, is suffered to remain uncut, so that it is a plant 

 of real economical utility.' 1 Bromfield quotes the 

 tradition of the grass having been brought over in a 

 ship's cargo, but this is a common way of accounting 

 for the local occurrence of exotic plants. The presence 

 of a colony of caraway (Carum carvi) on the west 

 coast of Scotland was explained to me many years ago 

 as the result of a shipwreck, but this plant occurs in 

 many parts of the British Isles, having been cultivated 

 from very early times for its aromatic seeds. If it be 

 not truly indigenous, it has become thoroughly 

 naturalised. Inasmuch as this cord-grass is found 

 growing in various detached places on the coasts both 

 of the North Sea and the Mediterranean, its transport 

 to Europe from America may be attributed with pro- 

 bability to the action of wind and wave. Now that we 

 have got it, it is our own fault if we do not make use 

 of its land-forming properties. 



1 Companion to the Botanical Magazine, i. 254. 



