90 TYPES OF BRITISH PLANTS 
of branches spread out freely, and the leaves are repre- 
sented, though feebly, by the sheath that runs around each 
joint overlapping the base of the section above it. All 
the horse-tails take up from the soil a large amount of 
“silica,” or flint, in solution, and deposit quite a bony 
skeleton within their walls. The fibro-vascular bundles, 
the attainment of which is the triumph of the fern class, 
are here very well developed, and, but for the production 
of spores in place of seed, they would rank in the top 
class of all. 
Club-mosses form another group of relatives, and it 
must be remembered that, by true classification, these 
are no mosses at all. The generation we ordinarily see 
is not that of the moss plant, but of the fern plant, 
ue. the next generation is produced by a single type of 
cells, and not by the conjunction of two kinds. The 
common club-moss, with its long creeping stem thickly 
clothed with small leaves that look almost like green 
fur, and its special branches of spore-cases, rising up 
into the air, and no longer creeping, may be found on 
any hill-moor. 
Both club-mosses and horse-tails have much fallen 
from a previous high estate, for at one time they grew 
to a gigantic size. From fossil remains we know that 
when the forests were flourishing which have now formed 
our coal-measures, the Horse-tails and Club-mosses had 
ancestors which grew to the height of great trees, and 
lorded it over other groups; but now they have come 
down in the world, and the flowering plants, which 
developed later, have managed to oust them from their 
pride of place, possibly because their special attention 
to the ways of reproduction gave their families a better 
chance in the struggle for life. 
