336 7 
generally cultivated grain; and a few of them 
even give minute directions as to the mode of 
treating it, which would be highly instructive to 
many a modern farmer. 
Generic character.—The flowers of barley are 
hermaphrodite, and are arranged into a compact 
spike, in alternate order on each side of a ter- 
minal rachis. They consist of imbricated bracts ; 
and the exterior of these bracts are husks or 
glumes, while the interior, which immediately 
enclose the organs of fertility, are paleee, or chaff. 
| Three florets constitute a spikelet, and two glumes 
belong to each floret. The glumes are extremely 
narrow, very unlike those of wheat, and amount- 
ing to little more than bristles. The pale are 
two and alternate, the inner one closely invest- 
ing the seed, and the outer one enwrapping and 
folding over the inner, and furnished with a long 
awn, beard or arista, beset with three rows of 
acute, upward-pointing bristles. The scales at 
the base of the outer palez are two in number, 
and very minute; and near them, in the situa- 
tion which botanists call hypogynous, or fixed 
below the base of the seed, are the three fila- 
ments, with their three anthers, which lie con- 
cealed within the palez. The ovary is simple, 
the styles are two, the stigmas are feathery—and 
these also are concealed. The pericarp is gener- 
ally not distinguishable from the seed. The al- 
bumen of the seed is farinaceous; and the em- 
bryo lies on the outer side of the albumen at its 
base. The cotyledon and the plumule are devel- 
oped; and the root becomes a fibrous rhizoma. 
The culm, which becomes the straw, is cylindri- 
cal, closed at its nodes or joints, hollow in the 
spaces between the nodes, and coated on the ex- 
terior with a silicious or flinty secretion. The 
leaves are alternate, and have a split sheath in- 
| vesting the entire spaces of the culm from node 
| to node. 
Barley is regarded as constitutionally more 
tender than some other cereal grasses, and, in 
many instances, cannot bear the rigour of our 
ordinary winters; and yet it grows wild over a 
wide extent of both the old world and the new,— 
it is successfully cultivated athwart a greater 
breadth of the globe than any other of the valu- 
able grains,—it flourishes under the heat and 
drought of the borders of the torrid zone, and 
grows sturdily and maturely on the northern 
verge of the temperate zone,—and, in general, it 
thrives and ripens, in not a few exposures and 
under various adverse circumstances, which the 
constitutionally hardier wheat is totally unable 
to resist. This singular phytological paradox is 
partially, if not wholly, explained by the peculiar 
nature of barley’s inflorescence. If a young 
green ear be examined, it will be seen that the 
spikelets—then closely packed together on each 
side of the rachis—consist each of three distinct 
florets, each with its pair of slender setaceous 
bracts, and that the central floret is larger and 
eared barleys. 
_more prominent than the side ones, and furnished | resolves the six-rowed and the partially four- 
Maa ied 
BARLEY. 
with a long bristly awn which reaches quite or 
nearly to the summit of the spike. On opening 
this central floret with a needle, the rudiments 
of the seed, stamens, and stigma, will be visible 
with the aid of a magnifying glass; but on open- 
ing the side florets, they will, in the case of all 
the two-rowed barleys, be seen to consist of little 
more than the very imperfectly formed integu- 
ments of glumes and paleze, and to be in conse- 
quence barren. When the stamens, anthers, and 
styles of the fertile florets are completely formed, 
they will be seen to conduct the process of 
impregnation under phytological circumstances 
which afford a peculiar protection from exterior 
disturbance, and from most of the ordinary causes 
of injury. In wheat, the three filaments, with 
their delicate versatile anthers, are protruded 
and exposed to every vicissitude of the weather ; 
but in barley, these vital organs, while equally 
perfect in organization, are masked and protected 
by the floral integuments. The latter’s process 
of impregnation, therefore, is conducted, through 
all its stages, in complete shelter from wind, rain, 
and hail; it escapes all the most serious risks of 
miscarrying to which the impregnation of wheat 
is exposed ; and, in particular, it is free from the 
disastrous liability of being damaged or rendered 
barren at the critical moment when the pollen is 
liberated by the expansion of the anthers. 
The Species of Barley—Many writers classify 
all barley, according to the time of sowing, into 
winter barley and spring barley. But some va- 
rieties of confessedly the same species, or of 
strictly similar botanical characteristics, are so 
hardy as to be quite suitable for winter growth, 
while others are so tender that they can be sown 
only in spring; and several kinds, whether spe- 
cies or varieties, which suit best for autumn 
sowing, and are with the greatest propriety de- 
signated winter barleys, may with perfect suc- 
cess be treated also as spring barleys.—Other 
writers classify all barley, according to the num- 
ber of rows of grains in the ears, into six-rowed, 
four-rowed, and two-rowed barleys. But all 
four-rowed kinds are partially six-rowed, and can 
easily be proved to be mere deteriorations of true 
six-rowed kinds, or deviations from them; and | 
the two-rowed kinds are so exceedingly diversi- 
fied as clearly to require amongst themselves a 
specific classification.—Other writers classify all 
barley, according to the adhesion or non-adhe- 
sion of the corolla to the ripe seed, into awned 
and naked. But this distinction, though a very 
marked one for the popular observer, accords ill 
with either the botanical distribution or the 
phytological habits of the different kinds, and 
besides is far too limited for the purposes of 
either assisting the memory or making a dis- 
crimination of qualities——Other writers classify 
all barley, according to the barrenness or fertility 
of the side florets, into flat-eared and square- 
But this distinction merely re- 
