131 



seems to have been formerly grown in preference to the common oat, 

 whence probably the name of hUl oat. The preference in question 

 reterred tothe ease of separation from the husk by the simple act of 

 threshing instead of incurring the labour and expense of carriage to 

 the mill tor converting the seed into grist or meal, which in earlv 

 times, in the wild districts of the North of England, Wales, and Scot- 

 land would be in most cases very considerable. The hill-corn, already 

 tree trom chaff, was dried on the cottage hearth, had only to be bruised 

 m a rough stone mortar, and was at once ready for family use, as oats 

 and other gram are still prepared in many half-civilized countries. In 

 Scotland the quern-mills are even now occasionally seen, no longer, 

 perhaps, in use, but broken and overgrown with moss, about many of 

 the farm tenements and labourers' cottages. 



The naked oat is generally regarded by botanists as a probable, if 

 not, indeed, a positive variety of Avena sativa, resulting from degene- 

 ration, but its triple-flowered spikelets and some other features render 

 the question a doubtful one. In the latter part of the seventeenth 

 century it appears to have been rather extensively cultivated in 

 England, and according to Eay, the grain sold at about the price 

 of wheat. 



AvBNA oEiENTALis. Tartarian Oat. Plate CXI. 



Panicle erect, somewhat compact, one-sided. Spikelets drooping, 

 two-flowered. Flowers shorter than the glumes, not hairy at the base. 

 One flower awned. 



Avena orientalis. Willdenow. 



This is as frequently seen in cultivation as A. sativa, and includes, 

 like the last, many agricultural varieties. Whether really a distinct 

 species is very doubtful. The only feature of any importance on which 

 such distinction could be founded, is the unilateral panicle, which cer- 

 tainly gives the present plant a very dissimilar habit to its congener. 

 Some botanists have remarked upon both the flowers being awned, 

 admitting at the same time that the awn is often very short in one. My 

 own experience tends to establish the opinion that the presence of an 

 awn to the second flower is rather an exceptional than a characteristic 

 development : it is certainly so in some of the leading varieties. 



Avena CMnensis I have never seen in cultivation. It is stated to 

 have been obtained by the Russians from the north of China, and to be 

 the most productive of all the known kinds of oat. Dried specimens 

 have much the aspect of A. nuda, being three-flowered, and the grain, 

 as in the latter plant, loose in the husk, favours the opinion that they 

 are either the same species varied by difference of cultivation, or 

 otherwise, that they are both partially correspondimg varieties of Avena 

 sativa. 



The spikelets of the Chinese oat are sometimes five-flowered. 



