186 ENGLISH BOTANY. 
2 seeds. Plant glabrous or slightly pulverulent ; the margins of the 
leaves, bracts, and sepals finely ciliated. 
Common Coiv-wheat. 
French, Melampyre des Pres. German, Weisen Wachlelweizen. 
This species is valuable as a food for cattle, though never cultivated in this country 
for that purpose. Its common name, according to Dr. Prior, comes from the fact that 
" its seed resembles wheat, but is only fit tor cows." Linnaeus says that when cows are 
fed in fields where the Cow-wheat is abundant, the butter yielded by their milk is 
peculiarly rich, and of a brilliant yellow colour. There appears to have been an ancient 
notion among the peasantry that the small seeds were capable of being converted into 
wheat as they fell ; so sudden a transformation, howevei", would puzzle even Mr. Darwin 
to credit or to account for. 
SPECIES IV— ME LAMP YRUM SYLVATICUM. Linn. 
Plate MV. 
Reich. Ic. Fl. Germ, et Helv. Vol. XX. Tab. MDCCXXXIV. Fig. 2. 
Billot, Fl. Gall, et Germ. Exsicc. No. 1287. 
Bracts green, lanceolate, acute, flat, ascending, shortly stalked, 
rounded at the base, without teeth, finely ciliated. Elowers 
sub-erect, in a very lax spikelike raceme. Calyx glabrous ; teeth 
lanceolate, ciliated, nearly equal, all spreading. Tube of the corolla 
arched towards the apex, scarcely exceeding the calyx-teeth, three 
times as long as the open lips. Capsule rather longer than the 
calyx, with an ovate profile, the curvature on the upper and under 
sides nearly equal. 
In woods in mountainous districts. Rare. In the North of 
England and Scotland ; but small specimens of M. pratense have 
been so often mistaken for M. sylvaticum that it is difficult to fix 
the precise distribution. Perthshire and Aberdeenshire are the 
only two counties in which I have gathered it ; but I have seen 
specimens from Yorkshire, Dumbartonshire, and Forfarshire, and 
Mr. II. C. Watson has specimens from Durham and Moray. 
According to the " Cybele Ilibernica," it occurs in the North-east 
of Ireland. 
England, Scotland, Ireland. Annual. Late Summer 
and Autumn. 
Extremely like small specimens of M. pratense, but more 
slender, with the branches less spreading and less flexuous, G to 15 
inches high; the leaves less spreading, more attenuated towards 
the base ; the bracts always without teeth ; the flowers more 
remote, much smaller, -£ to | inch long ; the corolla bright orange- 
