ENGLISH BOTANY. 
in Ireland, where it occurs in counties Kerry, Cork, and Dublin. 
Var. 3, Claygate, Surrey (Mr. H. C. Watson), Bluntisham, Hunts (Eev. 
W. W. Newbould); Knutsford, Cheshire (the Hon. J. L. Warren); 
and doubtless elsewhere. 
England, [Scotland], Ireland. Annual. Summer, Autumn. 
Stem 2 to 4 feet high, stout. Leaves 6 inches to I foot or more 
long, I to f inch broad, dull green, darker on the back, often with a 
few long scattered hairs. Panicle 6 inches to 1 foot or more long. 
Spikelets f to 1 inch long exclusive of the awns. Lower pale ulti- 
mately very dark brown in var. a, but much paler in var. /3. 
A. fatua is readily distinguished from A. strigosa by its very 
lax panicle ultimately spreading in all directions, by its more equal 
glumes, which are longer in proportion to the florets, by its lower 
pale being darker in colour, usually densely clothed in the lower half 
with bristly hairs, which are at first pale but ultimately become dull 
yellowish-orange, and having the apex terminated by 2 very short 
instead of 2 very long sette. 
In habit A. fatua closely resembles the cultivated oat, A. sativa, 
but it has the panicle larger and more spreading, the florets all 
awned, the lower pales much darker coloured, more strongly nerved, and 
usually hairy. The florets in A. fatua open and allow the stigmas 
to protrude usually before the anthers are empty of pollen; and from 
the fragility of the axis of the spikelet the florets drop more readily 
out of the glumes than in either A. strigosa or A. sativa. 
The two vars. were first noticed in Britain, as far as I am aware, 
in Gray's ' Xatural Arrangement of British Plants,' where our var. 
3 is made the type of the species ; but it seems to be less abundant 
than our var. a both in Britain and on the Continent. 
Wild Oat 
French, Avnhip f Alette. German, Flng- or WuuhJIafer. 
This is one of the most mischievous of agrarian weeds, and, as it grows in corn 
crops, if its seeds ripen before the com is cat, the sowing of these render it difficult 
to get rid of the pest. 
Farmers have always held the notion that crop eats degenerated into weed oats, 
base of the florets." But one ha.s only to look attentively at a poor sample of market 
with a more or less stiff awn. Poor oa.is with awns may produce in better soils 
