56 



with this habit it constitutes one of the many species known as 

 couch grasses, as well as by other provincial appellations already 

 noticed in our work. In some of the northern counties it is called 

 "knot-grass/' and a Yorkshire farmer calls it "the vilest of all 

 light-land wi^kens." The tendency which it has, in light soils, to 

 form small bulbs or tubers, is the cause of this execration. A very 

 intelligent correspondent of the "Farmer's Magazine," June 1855, 

 in his paper on the "classification and extirpation of weeds," 

 observes that " no weed is more troublesome to the farmer than 

 this on the bet'ter turnip soils, and on the more loamy clay fallows. 

 The root is perennial, and composed of knobs or bulbs that are 

 joined together at distances by intervening threads, and from each 

 bulb shoots proceed, which circumstance renders the extirpation of 

 the weed exceedingly difficult and tedious." — " The roots are very 

 tenacious of life, and no degree of arid exposure will destroy the 

 vital principle. Decomposition in a heap, along with other earthy 

 matters, requires to be very minutely inspected at each turning 

 over of the heap ; for some roots are very apt to escape on the out- 

 side of the com{)ost, and which, being carried to the land, will 

 immediately grow, and multiply very fast. Even the burning of the 

 roots in heaps on the field is not thoroughly safe ; for the outside 

 may escape ignition, and grow as before. The most efiectual 

 method is to carry the roots from the field at once, and to lay them 

 in some waste corner, where they may be burned at leisure." This 

 extract may serve to caution the amateur or even the practical 

 farmer against the admission, knowingly, of the seeds of the grass 

 before us among those selected by seedsmen and printed in their 

 catalogues, as insuring copious crops, and adapted for artificial pas- 

 ture. Nature has distributed it widely, and so long as it has to 

 struggle for existence with other self-established tenants of the soil, 

 it is harmless, and probably beneficial to the animals feeding upon 

 the mingled herbage, among which it is an admitted but never a 

 predominant associate. On the down, and the heath, and the corn- 

 mon, its ill qualities are all either counterbalanced or restricted; it 

 is only when the ground is broken up, and the pasture converted 

 into arable land, that the mischief commences ; then, its bulb-form- 

 ing habit and tenacity of life come into action, and, resisting the 

 destructive processes to which its less enduring brethren have 

 yielded, it becomes one of the worst of weeds. 



Dogs eat the leaves to excite vomiting, in the same manner as 

 they do those of TViticum repens. 



Genus 23. HIEEOCHLOE. Holy Grass. 



Gen. Char. Inflorescence paniculate. Spikelets stalked, three- 

 flowered. The two lower or lateral flowers stameniferous only 



