two inches or more in length ; round, cylindrical, blunt, soft, with 
silvery hairs. Calyx-glumes united at the base, hairy, compressed. 
Corolla fpaleaj folded, nearly as long as the calyx-glumes, with 
5 green ribs, and a prominent dorsal awn. Anthers prominent, 
yellow, or purplish. Styles entirely united. Stigmas separate, 
long, slender, and feathery. Seed egg-shaped, small. 
This is one of our very best Grasses for permanent pasture, being 
early, plentiful in produce, and grateful to cattle in general. It has 
the power of vegetating very quickly, and will bear to be cut twice 
in a year to advantage. It naturally prefers a moist soil, and is best 
adapted for the improvement of such wet meadows as have been 
drained of their superfluous moisture, where, if due attention be 
paid in its introduction, it soon forms itself into a close thick turf, 
and from its rapidity of growth will maintain itself against many of 
the more powerfully creeping kinds. Mr. Sinclair informs us, 
in his very excellent and valuable work, the Hortus Gramineus 
Woburnensis, that this Grass constitutes part of the produce of all 
the richest pastures he had examined in Lincolnshire, Devonshire, 
and in the Vale of Aylesbury ; and that he found it still more pre- 
valent in Mr. Westcar’s celebrated pastures at Creslew than in those 
of Lincolnshire and Devon. 
“ Useful as is this Grass, yet the produce of the seed is not equal 
to what one might fancy, from the simple observance of the spiked 
head, which is capacious enough to afford abundance ; a species of 
fly, we are told, deposits upon the plant its eggs, and as the young 
larvae are produced, they feed upon the sweet and milky substance 
which the tender germ contains, and which in time would be ma- 
tured to seed : the depredations of this fly are said to be so great, 
that shortly every germ must be destroyed, had not nature appointed 
another insect to seek this animal as its food ! Cimex campeslris 
is the leviathan who takes his pastime there, and gorges on the 
delicate and helpless larvae : and Mr. Swayne observes, ‘ so corpu- 
lent does it become through its gluttony, that although it is provided 
with wings it can scarcely make use of them, nor even walk with 
agility ; it is probable it destroys thousands in a day.’ Could we 
carry our researches farther, there is little doubt but this Cimex be- 
comes, in its turn, an instrument to the being of higher orders of 
creation, and they to others, and thus, by successive gradations, con- 
tribute to the existence of Nature’s noblest animal ! who seems, in 
every instance, to have been the designed favourite of his Creator; 
and ultimately all his good works perfect themselves in order, some 
to satisfy his natural wants, some for his comfort, and some even 
for his fanciful desires ; and all teach us to receive them with grati- 
tude, and enjoy them with humility.” Mr. Knapp, in Gramina 
Britannica. 
