2i8 transactions—PERTHSHIRE SOCIETY OF NATURAL SCIENCE. 
which, although classed under this somewhat ungrateful and elastic 
term, have still, one and all of them, their particular duties to per¬ 
form in the economy of nature, whether binding together the sands 
of our seashores with their network of roots, or reclaiming and ren¬ 
dering solid the muddy flats of rivers and the spongy stretches of 
bogland on our Highland moors. 
However, I must confine my remarks to that very important 
class the members of which are used as pasture and forage plants, 
although I do not wish to keep strictly to those which are of use 
to the farmer only, as that would narrow very much our field of 
interest. Some of us, having little concern in things agricultural, 
may be much interested in those grasses which we commonly find 
in lawns. 
Surely everyone, no matter how thoughtless, cannot but be struck 
in one way or another with the beauty and varied forms of our grasses, 
whether seen in the velvety lawn or the waving hayfield, in the closely 
cropped hill pasture or clothing the banks of some stream with their 
bright green foliage and graceful flower stems. 
Besides delighting our eyes with their beauty, they have, as I have 
already said, all got their various uses, and are adapted to grow in 
some particular soil or situation, and it is in pointing out these that I 
wish to have your attention this evening. 
If we examine a lawn we will probably be able to single out 
several varieties of grasses distributed over the surface. Amongst 
them we shall find the crested dogstail, the wood meadow grass, the 
hard fescue, the fine-leaved fescue, the rough-stalked meadow grass, 
the fine bent grass, and here and there the coarser ryegrass. 
Taking them, then, in this order, first we have the crested dogstail, 
Cynosurus crisiatus^ one of our most useful grasses, although the 
wiry nature of its flower stems makes the farmer doubtful about it; 
but if kept closely cropped, and used in its proper place, there can 
be no doubt of its value. For hay it is of little use ; but as it stands 
dry weather well it is very suitable for sowing on high-lying ground or 
for forming a bottom grass in the permanent pasture. 
It is never sown alone except in lawns and bowling greens, and 
in these cases it takes a longer time to form a turf than a mixture of 
o-rasses, but the sower’s patience is rewarded by the fine sward that 
results. 
It is a perennial, varying from ij to 2 feet in height, its seeding 
capacity being about three times that of ryegrass. 
Poa ?iemoralis, or wood meadow grass, is, as its name tells us, to 
be found growing naturally in shady woods. It is not much used in 
agriculture, although its presence in the permanent pasture should be 
valuable on account of its extreme earliness, being as it is one of the 
