AGROSTEMMA. 
worms, and is an excellent remedy in diabetes ; 
an ointment made from it heals wounds, ulcers, 
burns, and blows, draws out thorns or splinters 
from the flesh, and heals luxations and bones 
forced out of joint ; and these or other prepara- 
tions alleviate coughs, and operate as a panacea 
against one-tenth or so of all the diseases of the 
human frame. We entreat farmers to protect 
their families and dependents from the practices 
of quackery. 
AGROSTEMMA. See Campion (Rosz). 
AGROSTIS. A genus of grasses, of a creep- 
| ing habit, and with loose branched, capillary 
panicles of flowers. 
Most of them are popularly 
called bent-grass ; two of the best known British 
species are regarded in England as troublesome 
weeds, under the name of guitch or quicks ; and 
a variety of one of the species has, for about 
thirty years, had great celebrity as a pasture 
grass, under the name of fiortn. They are dis- 
tinguished from all other British grasses, by the 
outer scales of their flower being two in number, 
unequal in size, membranous in texture, and con- 
taining but a single floret, and by the inner 
scales being also two in number, short, very thin, 
_ and almost transparent, and the larger of them 
occasionally having an awn at its back. Some of 
the species grow in rank, marshy grounds, and 
some in dry, exposed, barren situations; and most 
have hitherto been regarded as useless or even 
noxious to the farmer. Yet the genus has been 
the subject of so much controversy, and one or 
two of its species, or at least some varieties of 
those species, have been so highly extolled as of 
supereminent value, that a number of the several 
species and their known varieties require to be 
distinctly noticed. 
Agrostis vulgaris, or common bent, is the most 
common grass on many natural sandy pastures 
in most parts of England ; it abounds on nota 
few good soils, in elevated and exposed situa- 
tions ; and, in consequence of the rapidity with 
which it overruns pasture and garden ground, it 
is usually denounced by English farmers under 
the name of quicks, and exterminated as an 
annoying weed. Yet in spite of being a hard 
grass, containing comparatively little nourish- 
ment, it might probably, in some situations, 
demand favour from the farmer on account of 
its early habits; for it flowers from the third 
week of June till the third week of July, and 
matures its seeds before the end of August. Four 
varieties of Agrostis vulgaris are enumerated 
under the names of mutica, canina, pumila, and 
sylvatica ; and one of these is distinguished by 
having awned healthy flowers, one by having awn- 
less diseased flowers, one by having awned diseased 
flowers, and one by having viviparous flowers. 
The mutica and the canina are the most common 
varieties ; and they remarkably differ from each 
other in at once character of soil, earliness of 
habit, and nutritiousness of constitution. The 
Agrostis vulgaris mutica prefers sandy soils, flowers 
}tuous designation of quicks, and indignant de- 
persons as not sufficiently marked to be a dis- 
Agrostis stolonifera. 
mer 
AGROSTIS. 93 
from the third week of June till the second week 
of July, ripens in the beginning of August, and, 
on sandy soil, yields per acre when in flower 
10,2094 lbs. of green produce, 4,595 Ibs. of dry 
produce, and 582 lbs. of nutritious matter,—and 
when in seed, 9,529 Ibs. of green produce, 4,765 
Ibs. of dry produce, and 252 lbs. of nutritious 
matter. The Agrostis vulgaris canina prefers 
clayey soils, flowers in the second and third 
weeks of July, ripens in the end of August, and, on 
sandy loam, yields per acre when in flower 6,126 
Ibs. of green produce, 2,604 Ibs. of dry produce, 
and 240 lbs. of nutritious matter. The mutica is 
generally healthy, and obtains the popular names 
of common bent and fine bent ; but the canina 
is attacked by rust in both its culms and its 
leaves, and is usually called brown bent. The 
mutica, as may be seen at a glance, is, in all re- 
spects, much superior to the canina; and is the 
variety distinguished, par excellence, as bent, 
common bent, and Agrostis vulgaris. 
Agrostis alba or white bent, shares with Agros- 
tis vulgaris the English husbandman’s contemp- 
nunciation as a troublesome weed; and they are 
the only species very distinctly known to most far- 
mers, or even noticed in some scientific treatises. 
Agrostis alba, too, has the contradictory charac- 
ter in England of a bad plant and a good plant, 
—hbad in some situations and good in others ; 
and while denounced in the former character as 
quicks, it has often been erroneously identified in 
the latter character with the Irish fiorin. Agrostis 
alba grows luxuriantly in either marshes or clayey 
grounds; it takes stout and monopolizing posses- 
sion of the soil, greatly exhausts it, and cannot 
easily be eradicated ; it has smaller roots than 
any of the other species of agrostis, and can, at 
any stage of its growth, be easily recognised by 
this characteristic ; it flowers in the first week 
of August, and ripens about the beginning of 
September ; and, on clayey soils, it yields per 
acre when in flower 8,1674 lbs. of green produce, 
3,471 lbs. of dry produce, and 255 lbs. of nutri- 
tious matter. 
Agrostis palustris, or marsh bent, has a promptly 
stoloniferous habit, and is considered by some 
tinct species, or as only constituting a variety of 
It grows on stiff clayey 
soils, abounds in marshes, and occurs oftener in 
moist woods than any other of the stoloniferous 
grasses ; but it requires so much moisture in 
order to its thriving as to be properly a sub- 
aquatic ; and, in some watery situations among 
woods and shrubs, where it can obtain support 
from bushes, it often attains a height of five feet. 
It is greatly superior in useful properties to Agros- 
tis alba, and will even bear comparison with the 
best kinds of Agrostis vulgaris ; but it is much in- 
ferior to most sorts of Agrostis stolonifera, and can 
be viewed as little better than a weed, infesting 
spouty grounds, and choking up drains and cop- 
