Annital Report for 1887 of the Consulting Botanist. 297 
was supplied to a member as ryegi'ass, and charged, I suppose, 
the price of ryegrass. The germination of the meadow-fescue 
was high, the average showing nearly 96 per cent., and in no 
less than 12 per cent, of the samples every seed placed in the 
germinating case produced a plant. One sample of tall fescue 
contained 12 per cent, of ryegrass, but the other samples were 
entirely free from it. The average germination of this species 
was 74 per cent. 
Cocksfoot has been somewhat impure, as much as 20 per 
cent, having contained considerable quantities of Yorkshire fog. 
The germination averaged 76 per cent., but one sample con- 
tained only 6 per cent, of living seeds. It consisted almost 
entirely of empty husks, and was apparently the chaff from 
which "shelled" seeds had been obtained. It must have been 
placed in the market in the first instance as a deliberate fraud, 
and though the member who purchased it satisfied himself that 
the merchant from whom he had it was innocent, it is impos- 
sible for me to understand how any merchant could have passed 
such a sample through his hands without detecting that it was 
only chaff. It shows that much has yet to be done before all the 
members of the seed trade are intelligently acquainted with what 
they are dealing in. 
The smaller fescues were free from weeds, and their germina- 
tion was satisfactory. It is not easy to get true sheep's-fescue, 
the smaller seeds of hard fescue being frequently sold for that 
grass. But the small fescues — -fine grasses^ as they are often 
called — are of little vahae in pasture, their slender wiry leaves 
affording little food ; and hard fescue is on the Avhole the better 
of the two. Timothy, with the exception of the ergotted sample 
referred to, was throughout good, and the average germination 
was no less than 97 per cent. Meadow-foxtail often contains a 
large proportion of Aira ccespitosa. The germination of foxtail 
is very irregular. The average of the samples examined during 
the past year was 62 per cent. ; the highest sample reached 
88 per cent., and the lowest fell to 33 per cent. 
Of the meadow-grasses, Poa trivialis, or rough-stalked 
meadow-grass, was of the best quality. The seeds were pure, the 
germination averaging 79 per cent. This is important, as this 
species is certainly the best of the meadow-grasses. Three 
samples of Poa pratensis yielded only one, four, and fifteen 
plants to the 100 seeds, and the same number of samples of 
Poa nemoralis germinated only 12, 15, and IG per cent. These 
were sent to me along with good samples of Poa trivialis, and 
were probably obtained from the same merchants. The seeds 
of the Poas early lose their vitality, and those that are carried 
over even for a single year become very greatly deteriorated, 
