BRITISH SPECIES 65 
viridis S. veyticillata, Avena fatua, A. strigosa, Apera Spica-venti, 
Anthoxanthum Puelli, Briza minor. These agrarian species are 
rarely persistent in any locality, and most of them occur as British 
only in the south of England ; some have a world-wide distribution, 
tracking the tiller of the soil into every new region where he locates 
himself. Phalarts canariensis is spread all over Britain as a 
casual, through the universal use of its grains for feeding cage- 
birds. An extensive coastline gives us a large proportion of 
littoral species, about one-sixth of the total number. 
We have no well-marked species that is not found also on the 
continent of Europe, although varieties peculiar to Britain have 
been raised to specific rank by some botanists. Deyeuxta neglecta, 
var. Hookert, on the shores of Lough Neagh, Ireland, is not known 
to occur anywhere else. There are also some mountain varieties 
of Poa nemoralis, in the Scotch Highlands, which do not precisely 
correspond to continental forms—doubtless the result of insulation. 
According to Vyman’s Conspectus, the European species of grasses 
number 570; those of the British Islands number about 120, in- 
clusive of sub-species, but exclusive of many varieties some of 
which are regarded as species by continental botanists. 
Several of our grasses range northward beyond the Arctic Circle. 
Recorded from Greenland are —*Phalaris arundinacea, Anthoxan- 
thum odoratum, Hierochloe borealis, *Alopecurus alpinus, *A. 
geniculatus, Phleum alpinum, *Agrostis vulgaris, A. canina, Cala- 
magrostis lanceolata, *Deschampsia cespitosa, D. flexuosa, *Cata- 
brosa aquatica, *Poa alpina,* P. pratensis, *P.nemoralts, P. annua, 
P. cesia, *Glyceria fluitans, *Festuca ovina, F. rubra,*Agropyrum 
repens, Nardus stricta, *Elymus arenarius. Those marked * 
occur also in East Arctic America. Agrostis vulgaris, Anthoxan- 
thum odoratum, Catabrosa aquatica and Nardus stricta are found 
only south of the Arctic Circle. 
More than half our grasses have a wide range eastwards, being 
abundant all over Europe, dispersed through Siberia, except the 
extreme north and east, and more than twenty are found on the 
high plateaux of Central Asia and on the Himalaya and other 
mountains. The latter are A/opecurus pratensis, A. geniculatus, 
Phleum alpinum, Agrostis canina, A. vulgaris, Polypogon mons- 
peliensts, Calamagrostis epigeios, Trisetum flavescens, Avena fatua, 
A. strigosa, Phragmites communis, Poa nemoralis, P. alpina, 
Glyceria aquatica, G. fluitans, G. distans, G. procumbens, Festuca 
elatior, F. ovina, Brachypodium sylvaticum, Lolium temulentum, 
Agropyrum repens, A. caninum, Hordeum pratense. 
Comparing our grass flora with that of the Northern United 
States (north of North Carolina and Tennessee, and east of the 
Mississippi), we find that no less than 32 species are indigenous 
to both countries, beside which 28 other British species have been 
introduced ;from Europe, most of them now naturalized. Alto-. 
gether, out of 114 species described in Gray’s Manual, 60 are also 
British. Chapman’s Flora of the Southern States gives a very 
different result, for the number of indigenous species occurring 
H. G. F 
