94 DESCHAMPSIA C/ESPITOSA. 



most favourite habitats are wet marshy land, and it can only be tolerated for the 

 shelter it affords to smaller and less hardy species ; it is seldom eaten by 

 stock after the seed is shed, and as regards its nutrient qualities, it will be seen 

 from the Woburn experiments, that, at the time of the seed ripening, it yielded at 

 the rate of 10,209ft>. of green produce per acre, which lost in drying, 68911t>., and 

 afforded of nutritive matter, only 319H&. ; its cultivation therefore cannot be recom- 

 mended, and it will probably disappear wherever the land is drained. Johnson, 

 in his work on British grasses, says, of the tendency of this grass to form 

 tussacs : "In the economy of nature, these tufts, so unsightly and disfiguring to 

 the cultivated landscape, are valuable by contributing to elevate and solidify low 

 lands liable to be overflowed by rivers, aad where they occur on hill and mountain 

 slopes, by binding the spongy soil and preventing the slips which would leave them 

 bare. DISTRIBUTION IN NEW ZEALAND : NORTH AND MIDDLE ISLAND 

 ABUNDANT. 



Reference to Plate XXXVII. : Fig. 1. Plant. 2. Spikelet. 3. Floret. 

 4,4'. Nervation of empty glumes. 5. Nervation of flowering glume. 6. Nervation 

 of Palea. 7 . Scale. 8. Grain, natural size. 8 '. Grain enlarged. 



