CHAPTER VII. 



FERN ALLIES. 



ROM our childhood we have been familiar with 

 various members of the Horse-tail family 

 (Equisetuin), their hollow stems being ever 

 regarded as a prize in our juvenile games, because of 

 their capability of being disjointed and joined again, and 

 thus formed into chains or upright wands. Still they are 

 not an attractive group, like their relations the ferns, and 

 we need to look to their past history to learn the respect 

 due to them. 



In past ages the stems of Horse-tails rose, not like 

 mere crops of reeds from the bog or river margin, but like 

 huo;e forests of vegetable columns, grooved like the 

 elaborate work of the stone cutter, and supporting the 

 clouds on their lofty summits, thus turning the wide 

 desolate waste into a vast cathedral. " The Brora coal,"' 

 says Hugh Miller, " one of the most considerable oolitic 

 seams in Europe, seems to have been formed almost ex- 

 clusively of an equisetum, E. columnare." 



The Horse-tail family are characterized by a distinct 

 stem, furrowed, hollow, and with whorls of narrow 

 pointed leaves, forming sheaths, protecting each joint in 

 the stem, within which bristle-like branches are inserted : 

 the seeds, or spores, are placed in cones, which grow on 



