AGRICULTURAL SPECIES OF BENT GRASSES. 5 
cillata Vill., a noncultivated species mostly without stolons, because 
a specimen of that is in the Linnean herbarium and because some of 
the references relate in paru to the latter species; but the more con- 
servative judgment of other botanists is that the name properly 
_ belongs with the stoloniferous grass that is native about Upsala, 
* Sweden, there known as Kryp-hven. 
In commercial use, and formerly also in botanical publications, 
appears the name Agrostis dispar Michaux, described from South 
Carola. Hitchcock has examined Michaux’s original specimen and 
pronounces it the same as ordinary redtop. 
Agrostis capillaris is still another botanical name attached by 
some seedsmen to redtop. This name as used originally by Linneus 
im 1762 is based on various older descriptions, including one of his 
own published m the Flora Lapponica in 1737. The evidence 
regarding the identity of this plant is much involved, and modern 
Swedish botanists no longer consider it to be a Scandinavian plant. 
In any event the evidence is clear that the name can not be applied 
to redtop. 
The name marsh bent is also used occasionally in the seed trade, 
applied to redtop. This name apparently arose as an anglicizing of 
Agrostis palustris Huds., which, according to a letter from Dr. Otto 
Stapf, is based on a plant not distinguishable from Agrostis alba of 
Linneus’s herbarium. However, various English botanists use the 
name marsh bent in connection with a stoloniferous form. 
Another common name applied to redtop, especially in the Southern 
States, and formerly at least in Pennsylvania, is herd’s-grass. This 
name appears im agricultural hterature as applied to redtop as early 
as 1804 (18, p. 192-202). Inasmuch as the name herd’s-grass or 
herd-grass was applied in New England to timothy, botanical and 
agricultural writers have commonly pointed out that the herd’s-grass 
of Pennsylvania and the Southern States is redtop. In Pennsylvania 
usage the name herd’s-grass was applied both to Agrostis alba and 
to A. vulgaris, not only by agricultural writers, such as Mease (10), 
but also by the Pennsylvania botanist Muhlenberg (11, p. 69). 
Darlington (3, p. 10), however, restricts the name to Agrostis vulgaris. 
Herd’s-grass is still a common name for redtop in the Southern 
States. 
On the whole it would seem best to drop the name Agrostis alba, 
because it was founded partly on Poa nemoralis, and to use as the 
botanical name of redtop the next older name, Agrostis palustris 
Huds. 
FIORIN. 
Fiorin is the common name of an Irish grass which was much 
exploited as an agricultural crop by Dr. William Richardson, of Moy, 
Ireland, in the early part of the nineteenth century. This grass was 
