THE NATURAL HISTORY OF BRITISH GRASSES. 45 
the ©. cristatus. Now this park is constantly stocked with 
deer, Southdown sheep, horses, and oxen, by which the 
general turf is kept well cropped down, and yet no dead 
culms of any other grass will, as a rule, be found to prevail. 
Let it therefore be borne in mind that this is different from 
a meadow where the culms may become hard and woody 
before cattle are turned into it: they are always here, and 
keep every other grass from flowering but the one in ques- 
tion ; it is therefore quite evident that here at least the 
C. cristatus is not a favourite with deer or Southdowns. 
Perhaps, however, it was Sinclair’s very observation of 
the quantity of culms in Woburn Park that led him to con- 
clude that it formed so great a mass of the herbage; but 
if we bear in mind how very small and wiry these culms 
usually are, and how short in the leaf are the tufts of grass 
by which they are accompanied, we shall have reason to 
conclude that after all C. cristatus may there form but a 
small proportion of the herbage: at all events, we may 
safely determine that, if the grass in its young state was so 
favourite a pasture, it would, like others, be kept from 
growing culms by constant depasturing, but the grass in 
question seems all the more, because even the young shoots 
are never cropped. From these observations we feel bound 
to conclude that the C. cristatus is both a poor hay and 
pasture grass, and neither in quantity nor quality of either, 
worthy a place in a good meadow; and though it is true 
that it improves vastly under liberal treatment, yet the 
culms are left even in the lowlands on depasturing, and it 
fortunately happens that improvement of a pasture will 
cause the dying out of the greater portion of the grass in 
question, as it is essentially one of the poor pasture which 
cannot maintain its ground on the advance of other and 
more important species. The culms are gathered in quan- 
tity for straw-plaits, for which they are well adapted both 
from their fineness and strength of fibre.. 
#** Snikelets (locuste) with three or more perfect flowers. 
t Spikelets forming bilateral spikes. 
