TURRAIA. 
greyish-brown colour. The female appears in 
May or June, and lays her eggs on the young 
shoots of fir trees; the larve penetrate to the 
alburnum, and cause the terebinthine sap to form 
excrescences, which gradually harden; and the 
shoots either wither entirely away, or remain 
vital in only the lower part, and do not throw 
out young branches thence till the following 
year. The Argyrolepia turionella is so similar in 
appearance to the Cnephasia resinella as to be 
readily mistaken for it by an unpractised ob- 
server; and it has similar habits, and works 
mischief in a similar way, by depositing its eggs 
on the buds of young fir-trees. The only known 
remedy is to destroy the turpentine tumours, or 
to cut off and burn the infected twigs, at the 
time when they are inhabited by the active larve. 
TURPENTINE (Orn or). See TuRPENTINE. 
TURPENTINE TREE. See Pistacuta-TREr. 
TURRAA. A genus of ornamental, tropical, 
ligneous plants, of the bead-tree family. Several 
species, small evergreen trees of naturally about 
20 feet in height, have been introduced to the 
hothouse collections of Britain; and they love 
a soil of peaty loam, and are propagable from 
cuttings. 
TURRITIS. See Tower Mustarp. 
TUSHES. See Tooru and Agu or AnIMAIs. 
TUSSAC-GRASS,—botanically Dactylis Cespi- 
tosa. A hardy, forage grass, of the cock’s-foot 
genus and fescue tribe, introduced to Britain in 
1844, It almost excited a sensation throughout 
the well-informed part of the British agricultural 
community at its introduction; and has since 
been subjected to a great variety of cultural ex- 
periments, in widely different ways and distant 
situations, in the hope of its proving an exceed- 
ingly valuable addition to our field-plants,—parti- 
cularly on poor soils and swampy grounds, along 
the shores and upon sea-islands. It abounds in the 
Falkland Islands, and has been found alsoin Staten 
Land, in the Auckland Islands, in the Straits of 
Magelhaens, and in the vicinity of Cape Horn. It 
haslong been known to botanists; and is alluded to 
by most of the great navigators who have touched 
at the Falkland Islands since the days of Cook ; 
but was not brought prominently into notice till 
the recent voyage of discovery in the antarctic 
regions under the superintendence of Captain 
Ross. It is called tussac-grass from its roots 
being so densely matted together as to make the 
lower parts of its stalks form a large tuft or 
tussac. These basal or columnar portions, formed 
by the close approximation of the stems or culms, 
often rise to a considerable height—from 4 to 6 
feet; and the long tapering leaves then diverge 
from them, and hang down all around, often in 
a very graceful curve, like the falling waters of 
a jet deau. The masses are insulated, generally 
a few feet apart; and the leaves, meeting above, 
form a kind of arched roof, beneath which the 
ground is generally quite bare of vegetation. A 
tussac ground thus forms a complete labyrinth; 
TUSSAC-GRASS. 
539 
and a man may walk among its green arcades 
completely concealed from view. The earlier 
naturalists who examined it thought it to be a 
fescue, and called it Mestuca flabellata and Festuca 
cespitosa ; but Forster notices it under the name 
of Dactylis cceespitosa,—and that appellation is 
now retained, as a careful examination of its 
character leaves no doubt that it belongs to the 
genus Dactylis. The tussac is perennial. The 
root consists of a dense mass of tortuous fibres. 
The stems, which spring from the little hillock 
formed by the roots, are numerous, erect, branch- 
ed or divided only at the base, from 3 to 4 feet 
long, smooth, and compressed. The leaves are 
numerous, the lower ones very long, not unfre- 
quently from 5 to 8 feet, about an inch broad at 
the base, and gradually tapering to a point; from 
above the middle they are curved downwards, or 
even pendent ; the stem-leaves become gradually 
shorter upwards, and are of a pale glaucous or 
sea-green colour; and the other leaves are pale 
yellow. The panicle is a span long or upwards, 
very dense, forming a somewhat interrupted 
spike, nearly two inches broad, compressed and 
obtuse ; the branches short and erect; the rachis 
angled. The spikelet is composed of three or 
four florets, of a pale yellow-green colour; the 
calycine glumes are lanceolate, acuminate, longer 
than the spike of flowers, slightly keeled, shortly 
ciliated on the back, 3$ lines long, the margins 
a little involute, and, as well as the apex, mem- 
braneous and transparent, the superior one a little 
longer than the other, three-nerved, the nerves 
ciliated ; the lower glume or palea of the corolla 
is ovate, concave, compressed, and sharply keeled, 
bluntly trifid at the apex, and five-nerved; the 
stamens amount to three; the anthers have a 
pale yellow-colour ; the ovary is nearly ovate and 
glabrous; and the fruit is elongate-ovate, or al- 
most cylindrical, slightly trigonous, of a pale 
yellow colour, and smooth. 
It will at once appear, from the length and 
breadth of the leaves, the dimensions of the 
culms, and the profusion in which both these are 
produced, what an immense quantity of herbage 
this plant is calculated to afford. Both the 
leaves and the stems abound in saccharine mat- 
ter, and form a most nutritious food. The inner 
portion of the stem, for a little way above the 
root, is soft, crisp, well-flavoured, somewhat akin 
in gout to the kernel of a nut, and is often eaten 
by the inhabitants of the Falkland islands. The 
young shoots also are boiled and eaten like aspara- 
gus. But it is as affording pasturage for cattle 
that the tussac is to be chiefly valued. The 
Falkland Islands have long been known to be in- 
habited by many wild cattle and troops of horses ; 
and these are principally supported by this grass, 
and prefer it to every other kind of food; and in 
common with every herbivorous animal on the 
islands, they devour it with avidity, and are af- 
firmed to fatten on it in a short time. Their 
predilection is shown for it both in a green state 
EAS emt rT NOURI LN MORRISONS CORT en ld Co PN Ce SS NER TE SS 
