1911] The Ottawa Naturalist. 171 



host of winged allies. With what astonishment it must have 

 seen its neighbours, the Lady's Slipper, the Wood Lily and the 

 upland Harebell, blossom forth in all their glory to repel the 

 wanton advances of the spendthrift breeze, turning a deaf ear 

 to all its airy whisperings and yielding to the embrace of the 

 frugal honey-gathering bee. 



More than all, from amphibian through reptile to bird and 

 beast, it has watched unfold the whole drama of animal life on 

 earth, through scenes grotesque and monstrous, to culminate in 

 the grandeur of man ; and in all probability it will see that drama 

 draw at long last to its tragic close. 



It has been outdistanced in the race and nearly all its 

 compeers and contemporaries have passed to their grave. Yet 

 still on that grave it grows green and lives undaunted beneath 

 the shadow of alien giants no longer sporophyte, claiming elbow 

 room among flowering herbs and other such new-fangled forms 

 of life. 



Of all the members of this conservative family probablv the 

 archetype of our land plants is Lycopodmni selago, or its wood- 

 land next of kin L. lucidulum. The plants are very similar, and 

 an examination of either will serve to show the underlying 

 idea* (to use a Platonic term) that informed their prototvpe. 

 It is that of a simple vegetative shoot of unlimited apical growth, 

 with a radial output of small leaves, each leaf subtending a 

 sporangium or spore-case. The lines of development shown in 

 the genus as now extant are all subservient to the two great 

 functions of nutrition and reproduction, ihey consist in the 

 formation of (a) branches, (b) roots, (c) cones (i.e., terminal 

 fruiting spikes or strobiles). In the simplest forms the branch- 

 ing is dichotomous, that is, by the forking of the apex into two 

 growing tips; the process being repeated again and again so that 

 the plant in time has many leafy shoots on which to produce its 

 spore-cases; the development of branches in L. selago usually 

 stops here, the species growing for the most part on rocks and 

 exposed mountain sides. But in L. lucidulum a further step has ' 

 been possible owing to its growing in damp shady situations; 

 when the erect stem has branched and re-branched several times, 

 it becomes top-heavy and sinking under the weight of the super- 

 structure totters and falls into a recumbent position on the forest 

 floor; here a pall of dead leaves and decay settles down upon it 

 and in the darkness the shining green leaves that fringe it 

 densely from end to end forsake their ofhce, grow yellow and 

 die. The mother stem is buried; but she is not dead, and she 

 thrusts dow'n rootlets on the under side into the rich vegetable 



*Vtde Bower's Land Flora, pp. 288-36S. 



