THE NATURAL WISTORY OF BRITISH GRASSES. 43 
always sufficient and regularly supplied sustenance and 
moisture, there is no need for the nodular growth assumed 
by the var bulboswn when growing in sands, and provided 
as a storehouse of food for its living on in those periods of 
drought with which arid sands are mostly affected at some 
season or other. 
These bulbs, which are the ordinary nodes of the grass 
much enlarged, look like a string of onions on a small scale, 
which has given rise to its popular name of onion couch ; 
and upon the sand-beds upon which rest a great part of the 
towns of Gloucester and Cheltenham, and on the broken- 
down sandstone of the new red about Worcester, or the 
silicious drifts and soils of other districts, it sometimes 
forms a most troublesome weed, as each node is capable of 
growing a distinct plant, and so succulent are these that 
heat and dryness have even less chance of killing it than 
the common couch; the only way to get rid of it is to hand- 
pick it after repeated ploughing and harrowing. 
It may be supposed that the var. bulboswm would be a 
useful grass on sands; but as its propensity is to increase 
by roots, and it sends up no second growth of culm, as does 
the A. avenacewm, its yield of herbage is not half that of 
the true species; its bulbous growth, however, is large and 
rapid, and its knotted onion-like traces are much in the 
way of any crop with which it may be intermixed. 
The very bitter taste of the nodular masses would almost 
point it out as of medicinal use, but we have never heard of 
its so employment. 
Cynosurus—paniele spicate, flowers hidden in a comb- 
like shield, (involucre of botanists)—glwmes, equal 
awned, inner valve of glwmel with or without an awn. 
Cynoswrus eristatus—head of flowers forming a narrow 
spike, florets with a short awn.—P. 
Cynoswrus echinatus—head of flowers broadly ovate, florets 
with a rather long awn.—A. 
The comb-like shield by which the locuste of flowers are 
