IV. PREFACE. 



lent botanical knowledge, combined with his skill as a draughtsman, 

 peculiarly fitted him for the work. 



The condition imposed that the plates should be nature-printed 

 rendered it necessary in the first instance to publish the work in folio ; 

 but, as this large size is both inconvenient and costly, only a small edition 

 has been issued, and the present handy volume has been printed for 

 more general distribution. The plates now given, sixty-four in number, 

 and including eighty-seven different species and varieties of Grasses, are 

 reductions by the process of photo-lithography from the original folio 

 plates, and depict the Grasses as of one-half the natural size of the 

 original specimens. 



The descriptive letter-press accompanying the plates is brought 

 down to a later date in the first part of this small edition, so as 

 to include some changes of nomenclature which have been introduced 

 during the few years that have elapsed since the corresponding pages 

 of the folio volume were printed. 



The Botanical information has been collected from the best authori- 

 ties, but, in many instances, structural details are now furnished by 

 Mr. Buchanan, which have not been previously published, and many 

 of his remarks on the growth and value of the Grasses, founded on 

 experience acquired during his twenty-seven years' residence in the 

 Colony, possess great value, although, in view of the expected essay 

 on this branch of the subject they have been made as brief as possible. 



The general system of the classification of the Grasses has been 

 adopted from SIR JOSEPH HOOKER'S standard works on the New 

 Zealand Flora; but the method upon which the general and specific 

 characters have been arranged, is from a more recent work on the 

 British Flora, by the same distinguished botanist. 



Whilst this work has been in press the Seventh Volume of BENTHAM 

 AND MUELLER'S Flora Australiensis has been received, which contains 

 a few unimportant changes of name so far as they affect those Grasses 

 which are found to occur both in Australia and New Zealand, but it has 

 seldom been possible to adopt these changes in the present work, as 

 the plates with the previously accepted names of these Grasses were 

 already printed off. To the practical farmer, for whose assistance this 

 work is chiefly designed, the alteration of the scientific names is of 

 comparatively little importance, but, to assist botanists in referring to 



