98 



pastures most celebrated for fattening and keeping the largest quantity 

 of stock in Devonshire, Lincolnshire, and the Vale of Aylesbury." 



Few, if any, of our native grasses flourish so well as this under the 

 drippings and shade of trees, hence it is often called in the country 

 Orchard Grass. 



It is distributed naturally over the whole of Europe, and the ad- 

 joining parts of Asia, except in the extreme northern and colder 

 regions, and is met with in northern Africa, and in the United States 

 of America ; in the latter country, however, Mr. Pursh regarded it as 

 an introduction from Europe. 



Dr. Parnell seems to have been unaccountably misled, when, in his 

 valuable work on British Grasses, before quoted, he recorded the 

 Cock's-foot, a grass so eminently European, and described as indi- 

 genous by our earliest herbalists, as " said to have been originally 

 introduced" to England, it must be presumed, "from Virginia by the 

 Society of Arts." 



Genus 34. CYNOSUKUS. Dog's-tail Grass. 



Gen. Chab. Inflorescence spike-like, unilateral. Spikelets nearly 

 sessile, distichaus, one- to five-flowered, with a pectinated bract at 

 the base of each. Glumes two, nearly equal, membranaceous, 

 much shorter than the spikelet, one-veined, strongly keeled, 

 pointed. Palese two, membranaceous, linear-lanceolate ; the lower 

 one rounded on the back, five-veined, with a short rough awn 

 below the apex ; upper one pellucid, with the margins minutely 

 cUiated. 



The name, associated with the form of the inflorescence in Cyno- 

 surus cristatus, is from the Greek cyan, a dog, and oura, a tail. 



The genus, always one of small extent, has been much curtailed by 

 modern botanists, by some among whom even the two British species 

 are disjoined. The inflorescence is peculiar among grasses, or appears 

 so on the first view, on account of the so-called bract at the base of the 

 spikelets : this curious appendage is, however, itself an abortive spike- 

 let, consisting of a series of lanceolate or linear outer palese placed 

 alternately upon a rachis above each other, in accordance with the 

 arrangement of the flowers in the fertile spikelet which it accompanies. 

 The spikelets then, strictly speaking, must be regarded as growing in 

 pairs, one of each pair being constantly barren while the other is fertile. 

 The regular pectinate or comb-Kke form of these appendages renders 

 the mass of inflorescence very beautiful, and deserving of a close in- 

 spection, which, at the same time, quickly renders their true character 

 unequivocal. 



Cynosukus cjbistatus. Crested Dog's-tail Grass. Plate LXXX. 



Panicle interruptedly spicate, or raceme-like, elongated linear. 

 Spikelets nearly sessile, more or less distant, directed in two rows 

 to one side of the rachis. Flowers with a very short awn. 



