124 
FLORA AND SYLVA 
the hills. Journeying to the Mediter- 
ranean by the valley of the Rhone, they 
greet the eye with the earliest signs of 
southern vegetation ; when the first little 
rounded Olive-bushes begin to stud the 
warmer slopes, when the black Cypress 
appears here and there in the landscape, 
then the Great Reeds begin to rise and 
thicken upon the river bank and beside 
the water-courses, till as one nears the 
sea they spread into wide belts of waving 
grey, shutting in the river between living 
walls as instinct with life and motion as 
the hurrying flood itself. They gave the 
name to many a little sun-bathed town 
and village as in Cannae, Cagnes, Cannes, 
Cannossa, and, in far-off days, Cana — 
of Galilee — this " reed shaken by the 
wind" thriving throughout Syria and all 
down the valley of the Jordan. Through 
many generations the Great Reed has 
played a part in the daily life of the 
ancient world, from the days of the early 
hunters and the classic warriors of old, 
till reed-pipes heralded the dawn of a 
more pastoral age, and later still the 
husbandman learned to adapt it to the 
arts of peace. 
While they may never serve us in 
these rough-and-ready ways, the Giant 
Reeds give distinct effects in the warmer 
parts of Britain, and if not hardy in all 
winters they are sufficiently so in the 
best soils to be a valued addition to our 
southern gardens. While most luxuriant 
at the waterside or in damp spots, such 
places are against them in severe winters, 
while they often refuse to thrive in heavy 
ground though happy in warmer soils 
within a short distance. Where it is pos- 
sible to water freely during summer, or 
to irrigate by a trickle which can be cut 
off in winter, the plants will go to rest 
more fully and prove more hardy than 
on damper ground. Though the genus 
is not a large one, the seven or eight 
species are spread over a great part of 
the world, with one kind, the handsome 
Flowering Reed of New Zealand, con- 
fined to that country. Apart from their 
distinct beauty of form few plants make 
better covert for game or waterfowl, all 
kinds being useful in this way, from the 
Common Reed of our country [Arundo 
Phragmites) to the Great Reed, or 
even A rim do conspicua^ the drooping 
leaves of which form a jungle of dense 
cover beside the lowland streams in its 
own country, and are yet so rigid as to 
turn cattle when thickly massed. By 
the latest ruling this plant is removed 
from Aru?tdo and joined to the Pampas 
Grasses as Cortaderia conspicua ^hut the 
change is so recent and the plant so 
familiar under its old name that to omit 
all mention of it in this group might 
puzzle not a few, who are more at home 
with the living plants than with technical 
details. The plant certainly resembles 
the Pampas Grasses so nearly in general 
effectas often to be confused in gardens, 
but apart from the much earlier flower- 
ing of the New Zealand Reed, it may 
easily be told by its dwarfer and less rigid 
habit, leaves broader and less sharply 
toothed, and the looser flower-spikes 
which rise upon slighter stems high 
above the foliage, the plumes as beauti- 
fully curved as an ostrich-feather, with 
the silvery glumes drooping gracefully 
to one side. The plant is not quite so 
hardy or so vigorous as the Pampas 
