in English lawns, binding it well together and making a soft carpet. 
Too much of these clovers however, makes the turf too soft, es- 
pecially in damp spots. 
Gardeners not rarely send to various horticultural establishments 
for grass-seed to plant on their lawns, but the attempt to raise 
turf trom sown seed, here invariably results in the greatest disap- 
pointment. It would hardly seem necessary to inform gardeners that 
the best English grass seed supplied by seedsmen at home is utter- 
ly useless out here, but one hears so often of residents sending 
home for grass-seed that it is perhaps as well to call their atten- 
tion to the fact that the grasses of temperate climates will grow no 
better in the Straits, than our palms will in England. The greatest 
difficulty in raising grass from seed, here lies in the fact that there 
are abundance of seed eating ants which on li tiding a quantity of 
grass seed as laid down by a gardener, come in swarms and carry 
off all the seed to their nests where they eat it. The grass finches 
{Mania) also destroy a quantity. 
The most important grasses for turfing are t/tose with a prostrate 
creeping stem; grasses which merely form tufts are of very little 
use, as it takes a long time for them to cover the ground. As far 
as I know vye have no annual grasses here, unless it be Dimeria 
ornithopodioides a slender grass which at certain times of the year 
appears in considerable quantities in many places and then dis- 
appears again. But we have a good many tufted grasses and small 
sedges {Fimbristylis and Scleria) which fill up spaces in turf and 
are useful in that way, but do not make turf themselves. 
The following grasses are the most useful we have for turfing; — 
l schcemum ciliai'e — This is a good running grass with hairy 
lanceolate leaves about an inch or two long*. The inflorescence is 
a pair of spikes rather thick about an inch long, -purplish and hairy, 
borne on the end of a s'ender stem about 6 inches long: the seed is 
often destroyed by a bunt fungus giving the spikes a sooty ap- 
pearance. It is a very common road-side grass, creeps fast, and 
quickly forms a good turf mat : under good circumstances it will 
even smother Lalang, and is very suitable for ctivering clayey ground 
rapidly. It makes very good fodder when grown in damp ground. 
I schcemum muticum is a glabrous grass, with rather broad leaves 
one to 5 inches long, easily known by its pair of white spikes, so 
closely pressed together that they appear one ; the white colour of 
the spikes is chiefly due to the large white plumed stigmas A very 
fast* grower, covering ground rapidly with its verv Jong creeping 
stems often 12 or 14 feet or more in length. 7'hough the leaves are 
rather stiff and broad for the fine grass required for tennis lawns, 
this grass is perhaps the very best for covering clay banks or open 
clay spaces such as one often gets after c leaning a lalang field, 
like the last it can over grow lalang. For stiff steep clay banks such 
as railways banks r this is undoubtedly the best grass to employ : if 
planted at the top of the bank the long creeping stems will run 
