160 LYCOPODIACEA 
The stiff wiry branches and stems of the Stag’s-horn are thickly sur- 
rounded with small narrow leaves of a lanceolate form, flat and smooth, but 
with slightly-toothed edges. The thread-like point, which terminates each 
little leaf, gives a greyish tint to the otherwise bright-green hue of the plant. 
The upright stalks, on which the spikes are placed, are destitute of leaves, 
but have some small leaf-like scales irregularly disposed in whorls around 
them, and pressed close to their surface ; they are pointed, but have not the 
hair-like points of the leaves. The spikes of fructification, which are usually 
more than an inch long, are placed each on a partial stalk about twice its 
length—one or two, or sometimes three, of these terminating the main stalk. 
They are formed of a number of triangular, egg-shaped, leaf-like bracts, or 
involucres. The capsules are placed in the angle formed by the bract and 
the stem. Lach is two-valved, kidney-shaped, of a pale yellow colour, and 
filled with sulphur-coloured powder, single particles of which are too small 
to be seen by the naked eye. After these dust-like spores have escaped, the 
bracts all turn downwards, and thus greatly alter the appearance of the spike. 
Though this is the largest of our native Lycopodiums, yet in some other 
lands, as in the humid regions of the tropics, and in the United States of 
America, other species form a very conspicuous part of the herbage, not 
always creeping along the soil like large mosses, but standing erect, like 
miniature trees. Even these, however, are small in comparison with the 
club-mosses of older ages; for the geologist finds in the coal strata large 
species of similar plants, the Lepidodendrons, the numerous kinds of which 
must have formed an essential part.of the vegetation of the forests of remote 
epochs. They have, with the ferns and horse-tails, contributed more than 
any other plants to furnish those beds of coal which form so important a 
material of our comfort, and which have supplied the immense means for 
the diffusion of knowledge, science, and manufactures, by means of the steam- 
ship, the locomotive, and the printing-press. 
Those ancient plants, the Lepidodendrons, have stems of the same essential 
structure as those of our Club-mosses, are branched in the same way, and 
have similar leaves and fructification. While, however, our Lycopodiums 
are so moss-like that the older botanists described them as mosses, the fossil 
Lepidodendrons must have attained the height of trees, and had thick bases 
to their stems as large as the trunks of our oaks or firs. Leaves some inches 
long grew on their stems and branches, and under their shadow were 
developed those large ferns and horse-tails which are so abundant in the 
coal-measures, that ferns seem at one time to have formed more than three- 
fifths of the earth’s vegetation. Doubtless they aided by their living growth 
the purification of the atmosphere, and how much we owe to their decom- 
posed substance no pen can describe. If these gigantic plants are not exactly 
identical with the modern Lycopodiacew, yet they are so nearly so that little 
difference can be discovered by those who have most patiently and skilfully 
investigated the plants of the coal strata. 
Our native Club-mosses have no very great beauty to recommend them 
to our notice, save the green tint which they give to the hill-side or mountain- 
slope, or dripping rock or waterfall. They are a peculiarly alpine tribe of 
plants, LZ. inunddtum being the only species frequent in the low lands of the 
