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pact tufts, and sending up many flowering stems from one to two feet 

 high. Stem erect, round, striated. Leaves linear, flat, terminating 

 acutely, rough, especially at the edges, which are almost toothed with 

 minute siliceous points, broad, rather flaccid notwithstanding their 

 harshness to the touch. Panicle erect, the lower branches distant and 

 spreading, the upper ones often tufted, all turned in one direction ; 

 rachis and branches rough. Spikelets numerous, closely clustered, 

 forming ovate masses at the extremities of the branches, on short 

 rough footstalks, usually three- or four-flowered. Glumes membrana- 

 ceous, lanceolate acuminate, the keel rough or hairy. Lower palea 

 almost cartUagenous ; its fringed dorsal vein not quite reaching to the 

 summit, but extending a little below it as a short awn. 



The general aspect of the inflorescence varies much in different 

 situations ; the branches of the panicle being sometimes, in poor and 

 exposed pastures, so short and so close together as to give it the 

 appearance of a single cluster ; while in woods the secondary branches 

 even become so much elongated and spreading, that a person familiar 

 only with the ordinary form might readily mistake it for a different 

 species. 



Perennial. Flowers in June and July. 



Though apparently a coarse rough grass, and apt 'to form tussocks or 

 tufts that occasionally much disfigure the pasture, the Rough Cock's- 

 foot is a valuable species ; being generally liked by cattle, unless when 

 by understocking or neglect it has been allowed to become rank and 

 disagreeable to their palates. It is one of the earliest and most pro- 

 ductive, and, rooting deeply, is less liable to suffer from excess of 

 drought than most others on dry sandy soils ; hence in situations so 

 circumstanced, its superiority as a pasture grass is undeniable. As, 

 however, moist, retentive land, is more favourable to its luxuriance, and 

 induces an overgrowth destructive to those of weaker habit, but equally 

 produtive, it may be advisable, as a general rule in laying down grass 

 land, to exclude the Dactylis where other species of a finer quality are 

 found to flourish. Mr. Sinclair, in noticing its agricultural capabilities, 

 observes that the herbage, when suffered to grow rank or old, for want 

 of sufiacient stocking, contains nearly one half less nourishment than 

 that which is of recent growth. Hence this grass is more valuable for 

 pasture than for hay ; and to reap the full benefit of it in the former 

 case it should be kept closely cropped either with cattle or the scythe. 

 Even for hay he considered it far more valuable than Lolium perenne 

 and many other grasses, and for an alternate crop by far the best that 

 can be employed alone. The same writer further recommends an 

 admixture of three parts of Dactylis glomerata with one part of Festuca 

 dv/riuscula, Poa trivialis, Arrhenatherum avenacewm, Phleum pratense, 

 Lolium perenne, and white clover, to " secure the most productive and 

 nutritive pastures in alternation with grain crops on soils of the best 

 quality : and even on soils of an inferior nature, under the circum- 

 stances of unfavourable seasons, this mixture will afford^ nutritive 

 herbage, when the land would have been comparatively devoid of it, if 

 one species of grass only had been employed." In addition to this 

 we are informed, that Cock's-foot constitutes " a part of the herbage of 



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