54 
covering has been evolved in the native grasses of those parts of 
the world. On the bases of the leaf sheaths, instead of woven 
fibre or straw as described, we find a great development of hairs of 
a woolly nature so copious as to completely cover the base of 
the stem and give it a bulbous appearance. These woolly hairs 
are sometimes woven into a feltlike fabric of appreciable thickness, 
giving effective protection from injurious outside influences, 
and at the same time preventing the escape of moisture, while it 
absorbs water from the atmosphere and retains it for the replenish- 
ment of that required in the vital processes carried on in the living 
tissues of the plant. Eragroshs eriopoda, a North-West grass, 
gives a typical example of this arrangement, which may also be 
observed, though to a less degree, in other species of Eragrostis, 
Stipa, Panicum, Danthonia, etc. It would be easy to demonstrate 
the power of this felted tunic to retain moisture by wetting a 
clump of one of these grasses and a similar clump of another grass 
unprovided with a hairy covering, and laying both in an open 
place to dry, when it would be found that the felted covering 
would still be moist long after the other had become perfectly dry. 
In the sandy soil about Perth and in the South-West generally 
during the spring months may be seen a tall purplish grass, 
bearing at the top of its stalk a loose bunch of flowers somewhat 
resembling quaking-grass in shape. This is Poa nodosa, which 
grows up during the wet season, and continues for some time 
further into the dry period, (lowering and ripening its seeds when 
the sand in which it grows is almost constantly dry. II the base 
of the stem is examined, there will be seen one. two or three 
bulbous swellings of the base of the stalk, just below the surface 
of the sandy soil. These swellings are succulent, and contain a 
store of water in anticipation of the plant's needs during the 
course of the long periods of dry weather that are sure to follow. 
A similar formation is found in a variety of the well-known 
Timothy grass that grows in the drier districts about the Mediter- 
ranean Sea. There is no specific difference between this variety 
and the typical form (Phleum pratense) found in moister localities, 
beyond the presence of the bulbous swelling of the underground 
stem ; and when this form is transplanted to cultivated ground 
and supplied with sufficient moisture, the stems lose their bulbous 
character. Whether Timothy grass grown in dry localities in 
Western Australia ever assurnes this bulbous form, perhaps some 
of our agriculturists may be able to say. It it should be able 
to adapt itself to our climate it may be worth encouraging for 
that reason alone ; but whether the bulbous form be imported 
as such from its native steppes or modified from the ordinary 
form by a process of acclimatisation, it would be scarcely reason- 
able to expect it to possess the same succulence as the grass 
grown with abundant moisture. It might prove of value in dry 
districts, but at the same time our native grasses, long used to 
