892 T'ransactions.— Botany. 
parts of this colony, I have no doubt, this cane would be a most useful 
plant, both for live stock and for its sugar-bearing qualities, which might be 
utilized in many ways. 
- The Penicillaria spicata—East Indian pearl millet grows here during 
the hottest and driest weather, and gives from each root a very large 
quantity of herbage, as it grows several feet high and 8 feet in diameter. 
For the north of this island, where other plants will not grow, it is most 
valuable. Either cut green, or made into hay, it has been known to pro- 
duce during the year, when cut several times, 91 tons of dry hay to the 
acre, which was quite tender and sweet, and readily eaten by the cattle. 
The Cobbet-corn, or forty-day maize, is very hardy and prolific; although 
a dwarf kind of maize, it can be sown more closely than the taller-growing 
varieties, and ripens its corn and arrives at perfection in southern localities - 
where the other kinds do not so easily ripen. It can be saved for its seeds, 
which horses readily eat, or cut green for fodder, or put away in silos and 
fed to the live stock in winter. It has proved itself a very quick grower, 
and ripened well with me. 
The White-dent Corn.—A valuable maize of the best kind to grow for 
domestic use, as being semi-transparent, white, hard, and of good flavour; 
its flour, when grown, is good for private use or export; after its cobs are 
removed its stalks and dry leaves are readily eaten by live stock. 
Rice Corn.—A small variety of maize that yields a pretty little trans- 
parent grain, that may be ground into a good flour, or the whole plant 
may be given to live stock, either green or dry. 
Sugar Corn.—Several varieties of maize under this name were obtained 
from America and elsewhere, and grown. There are several of these varie- 
ties well worthy of introduction here as fodder-plants, as they contain a 
large percentage of sugar. When their cobs have formed grains somewhat 
hardened, they are best to be cut at this period, as, if then either fed to 
animals green, or placed in silos according to the French plan, and well 
trodden down, and covered so that the air is excluded, they may be cut out 
in the winter, and animals then rapidly fattened and thus got ready for the 
butcher, when, by reason of the temperature and want of other herbage, 
very few fat stock are obtainable. 
In America the cobs of these sugar corns are gathered while soft, or 
before fully ripe, and cooked and eaten, and if any one will try the experi- 
ment they will find this an excellent vegetable. 
The Sweet Corns are other varieties of maize not having quite as large a 
proportion of sugar as the sugar corn, but are very useful. 
The above-written are the grasses and fodder-plants that carefully- 
conducted experiments have proved to me can be grown in New Zealand 
