232 



SELECT PLANTS READILY ELIGIBLE 



are so buoyant as to float lightly on water, and while the 

 uppermost spiny rays are acting as sails, they are carried 

 across narrow estuaries to continue the process of embanking 

 beyond on any newly formed sandbars. 



Spondias dulcis, G. Forster. 



Fiji, Tongan and Society Islands. This noble tree is intro- 

 duced into this list to indicate, that trials should locally be 

 instituted here as regards the culture of the various good 

 fruit-bearing species of this genus, one of which, S. pleiogyna 

 (F. von Mueller), transgresses in East Australia the tropical 

 circle. The lamented Dr. Seemann saw S. dulcis sixty feet 

 high, and describes it as laden with fruit of agreeable apple- 

 flavour called Rewa, and attaining over 1-lb. weight. 



Stenotaphrum Americanum, Schranck. {S. glabrum, 

 Trinius.) 



South Asia, Africa, warmer countries of America, not known 

 from any part of Europe or Australia. Here called the 

 Bufialo-grass. It is perennial, creeping and admirably 

 adapted for binding sea-sand and river-banks, also for 

 forming garden-edges, and for establishing a grass-sward on 

 lawns much subjected to trafiic ; it is besides of some 

 l^astoral value. It was this grass, which Mr. John C. Bell 

 reared with so much advantage for fodder on the bare rocks of 

 the island of Ascension, and it was there where Australian 

 Acacias took the lead to establish wood vegetation and for 

 securing permanency of drinking-water. 



Stilbocarpa polaris, Decaisne and Planchon. 



Auckland's and Campbell's Islands, and seemingly also in 

 the southern extremity of New Zealand. A herbaceous 

 plant with long roots, which are saccharine and served some 

 Avrecked people for a lengthened period as sustenance. The 

 plant is recommended here for further attention, as it may 

 prove through culture a valuable addition to the stock of 

 culinary vegetables of cold countries. 



Stipa tenacissima, Limie.* (Macrochloa tenacissima, Kunth.) 

 The Esparto or Atocha. Spain, Portugal, Greece, North 

 Africa, ascending the Sierra Nevada to 4000 feet. Tliis 

 grass has become celebrated since some years, having 

 afibrded already a vast quantity of material for British 

 paper-mills. It is tall and perennial, and may prove here a 

 valuable acquisition, inasmuch as it lives on any kind of poor 

 soil, occurring naturally on sand and gravel as well as on 

 clayey or calcareous or gypseous soil, and even on the very 

 brink of the coast. But possibly the value of grasses of our 

 own, allied to the Atocha, may in a like manner become 

 commercially established, and mainly with this view paper 



