3. _Herbaceum_ var. nov. Cespitose, decumbent, ascending or erect, 3 to 10 inches high, ½ to 1 line in diameter, 6 to 12 angled, weak and herbaceous or becoming firmer the second year, usually bearing a single branch 1 to 2 inches long at each node. Walls of the stem thicker than in _hiemale_; ridges with long cross-bands; grooves naked, except for small spots of silex on the cells; sheaths elongated and very wide-spreading, with a narrow black band at tip, otherwise green or (in dried specimens at least) all suffused with black; leaves 3-angled or flat in the middle above, rarely bearing a central groove; teeth fuscous, flexuous, deciduous, leaving a hard, horny, centrally grooved erect or incurved, usually shining, borderless leaf base ½ its height; spikes narrowly elliptical, rounded, not apiculate. _Coville & Funston_, 1297, Death Valley Exp., banks of Kaweah river at Three Rivers, Tulare Co., Calif., July 26, 1891 (Nat. Herb., 25, 101), as _variegatum_. Three little plants, 3 inches high, well fruited (Cont. Nat. Mus. IV, 226). _C. & F._, 1042, 1 mile south of Kernville, Kern Co., Calif., on north fork of Kern river, Alt., 750 meters, June 23, 1901, as _variegatum_ (Nat. Herb., 25100). In some of its characters, such as sheaths and persistent, incurved leaf-bases, this plant resembles _Funstoni_, but the section is similar to _hiemale_. An abundance of material might show this to be a good species. The only thing I have seen that approaches it in texture is _E. Sieboldi_ Milde from Japan, which is even more grass-like. 4. _Pumilum_ var. nov. Cespitose; stems in a dense cluster, 6 to 15 inches tall, 8 to 16 angled, ½ to 1 line in diameter, mostly geniculate at the lower nodes, nearly all the joints tumid, the lower gibbous; ridges with cross-bands of silex, grooves naked; sheaths tight, often symmetrical through the tumidity of the node, narrowest in the middle except where nodes are normal, bearing a broad black band below and a narrower black limb, the two separated by a pinkish or dirty white band which is often suffused with black or even entirely black towards the top of the stem, fading to dirty ashy the second year, ultimately splitting, recurving and falling off in patches; leaves linear, erect, prominently 3-angled, the central one sometimes grooved on the smallest stems and branches; teeth persistent, dark brown, somewhat flexuous, white-bordered for 1-5 to 1-4 their height. Found at intervals for a mile along the railroad grade at North Hampton, N. H. At the foot of the grade, in moist soil near a brook, probably from the same source as this, a form of _affine_ grows, but the joints are often tumid and occasionally geniculate, the branches when present like stems of this, tumid jointed, often so gibbous as to rupture the sheath. Peculiar for its small cespitose stems, dark sheaths and especially the tumid or gibbous nodes, which make the stems thickest there, while usually the nodes are contracted.