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to every country in which the probable time of its introduction lies 

 beyond the reach of even traditional research ; such has been the case 

 with the oat on British soil. The effect of long cultivation under 

 different climates and modes of treatment, and in every kind of soil, 

 has greatly modified the aspect of this and other cereal grasses, and 

 led to the production of numerous varieties, the peculiar or individual 

 features of which are, in some instances, so striking as to have led to 

 the supposition of their being distinct species. Leaving these for after 

 consideration, we will refer to the general characteristics of Avena 

 sativa as a separate species. Variable in height, from a foot and a 

 half to more than three feet, the equally spreading or diffuse form of 

 its panicle distinguishes it at a distance from A. orientalis, in which 

 the more contracted inflorescence is one-sided ; the spikelets of both 

 contain only two fertile flowers, contrasting them equally with A. nuda 

 and A.faUm, which are both three-flowered. To these characters it 

 may be added that the flowers are never equal to the glumes in length, 

 nor have they ever any long fulvous hairs at the base ; while only one of 

 the two in each spikelet is awned, the awn being comparatively short, 

 indeed, in most instances, little more than the length of the palea, to 

 which it belongs, instead of being more than double, as in the common 

 Wild Oat, Hover, or Havers. 



Annual. Flowers in June and July, 



Though grown by the Romans in Italy, and by other southern 

 people, the oat is strictly considered a cereal, naturally adapted to cold 

 and wet climates, its open spreading- inflorescence and few-flowered 

 spikelets being alike favourable to the more ready ripening of the 

 grain, and adverse to the retention of moisture, which in rainy seasons 

 is so prejudicial to wheat and other close -flowering corn plants. 

 Hence the more extensive cultivation of this grain in northern than in 

 southern lands, and its use in the former as a staple human food, 

 while in the latter it is almost exclusively grown for feeding horses. 

 In very warm countries the grain is so small as to be scarcely worth 

 the expense of raising for the latter purpose, and the horses of Achilles 

 at the siege of Troy, as Homer informs us, were regaled with barley. 



The English name Oat and the Scotch Ait, are from the Saxon 

 Ate, and evidently associated with the verb aten or etan, to eat ; a cir- 

 cumstance sufficiently indicative of the early use of the grain as bread- 

 corn among the peoples of the north. 



The principal varieties of this useful plant, or those which are so 

 strongly marked as to be regarded by certain botanists as distinct 

 species, axe Avena nuda, the naked oat; A. cMnensis, the Chinese oat; 

 and A. orientalis, the Tartarian oat. Of the last of which we give a 

 figure, though without adopting the opinion that it has any positive 

 claim to being so considered, any more than have its two associates. 

 The strictly agricultural kinds in use among our farmers are much 

 more numerous, but we have no space here for the discussion of their 

 relative values, and the soils to which they are individually best suited, 

 however important such topics may be to the cultivator. 



Oats and barley mark the utmost limit of European agriculture, 



