THE NATURAL HISTORY OF BRITISH GRASSES. 39 
These varieties mark different agricultural conditions ; 
and though neither of them are of great use as pasture- 
grasses under ordinary circumstances, yet the peculiar 
method of growth of the A. stolonifera, united with the fact 
of the great increase both in quantity and quality of its 
herbage under irrigation, point it out as a grass well adapted 
to form part of the produce of an irrigated meadow. As 
an agrarian, however, it is usually known by the name of 
squitch ; and its small wiry rhizome renders it exceedingly 
difficult to eradicate, especially from brashy land, which is 
its favourite habitat, and in which it spreads so fast, that a 
summer fallow becomes so literally choked up with it as 
almost to exclude every other form of weed, if we except 
Triticum repens—common couch—which is its usual con- 
gener. 
*% Spikelets with mostly two perfect florets. 
Moxin1a—panicile contracted, not spicate ; glumes acute. 
M. cerulea—purple melic-grass. A species remarkable 
for its solid stem and few nodes ; it has long wiry roots, by 
which it mats together the humus soils of peats and moors; 
it is of no value in pasture, but is always an index of want 
of draining and general amelioration, under which it imme- 
diately disappears.—P. 
CataBrosa—panicle spreading; glume of two obtuse 
valves, including the two or three florets; glwmel 
truncated, awnless. 
CO. aquatica—water-whorl-grass. It is a perennial water- 
grass, and its only British species will be found in ditches, 
water-courses, and ponds, where it frequently grows very 
luxuriantly, and is remarkable for a peculiarly sweet licorice 
flavour, on which account cattle crop it down very closely 
whenever they can reach it; it is, however, so purely aqua- 
tic—refusing to grow away from water—that nothing can 
be done in its cultivation. A dwarf variety will frequently 
be found on mud-banks ; but here it is an evidence of their 
wetness.—P. 
