( SfS ) 
new progeny. The parts of fructification may 
be well feen in the flowers of the briza max- 
ima. The beautiful drooping fpikes of this 
fpecies are peculiarly elegant from their tre- 
mulous motion, caufed by their flender 
peduncles, w T hence the genus derives it's 
common name of quaking grafs. Al- 
though the characters here given of the 
parts of fructification are all found nearly 
conftant in thofe genera, which are placed 
in the clafs Triandria, there are others 
-which fail in the claffic character of the 
number of ftamens, and are thence placed by 
I-yinneus in different claffes; which feparation 
of plants, manifeftly of the fame natural or- 
der, is the more extraordinary, as, in fome 
cafes, he has not thought it neceflary ftrictly 
to adhere to the obfervance of the claffic cha- 
racter, when it has fo directly militated 
againft an obvious flmilarity in every other 
part of the fructification, as in holcus lamU 
tus, but has made the difference the founda- 
tion of a fpecific character. The holcus 
lanatus, meadow foft grafs, having fome of 
it's flowers deficient in the proper number of 
ftamens and piftils, w T hich would rank it in 
the clafs and order Triandria Digyuia ; Lin** 
neua 
