CLUB-MOSSES 161 
south-east of England. The stems of all are clothed with leaves densely 
crowded upon them, and overlapping like the tiles on a roof—an arrange- 
ment which the botanist terms imbricated. The fructification is placed in 
the axils of the leaves or bracts, that is, in the angles between these and 
the stems; and it generally grows in a cone at the top of the stem. It 
consists of kidney-shaped capsules, which have from one to three valves. 
Two distinct substances lie enclosed in the capsules of some species. One 
kind is a small dust-like powder, composed of smooth grains ; and the other 
consists of three or four globular-shaped fleshy bodies, many times as large 
as the powder. The powder is produced by all the species of Club-moss ; 
but the larger fleshy bodies occur but in a few, and are not found in the 
Stag’s-horn. 
The Club-mosses are called in Italy Licopodia, and in Holland Wolfsklaw, 
and the Germans call the plant Kolbenmos. In Sweden, wreaths of our 
common species are commonly worn on festive occasions by the peasantry ; 
and Anna Howitt, when describing the May festival at Starnberg, in 
Germany, says: “ People arrived even faster and faster ; there were parties 
in carriages, with servants and gentlemen; there were parties on foot, the 
gentlemen with wreaths of ivy or Stag’s-horn Moss twisted round their 
straw or felt hats, with gentians, cowslip, or primula flowers stuck into their 
buttonholes.” Wordsworth alludes to a similar mode of using the moss in 
the north of England : 
‘* Or with that plant which in our dale 
We call Stag’s horn or Fox’s tail, 
Their rusty hats they trim ; 
And thus, as happy as the day, 
Those shepherds wear their time away.” 
Mr. Matthew Arnold, too, refers to the plant :— 
** Under the glittering hollies Iseult stands 
Watching her children play ; their little hands 
Are busy gathering spars of quartz, and streams 
Of Stag’s-horn for their hats. Anon with screams 
Of mad delight, they drop their spoils and bound 
Among the holly clumps and broken ground, 
Racing full speed, and startling in the rush 
The fell-fares and the speckled missel-thrush 
Out of their glossy covert. But when now 
Their cheeks were flush’d, and over each hot brow 
Under the feather’d hats of the sweet pair 
In blinding masses shower’d the golden hair, 
Then Iseult called them to her.” 
Very pretty ornaments were, in former days, made of the Club-moss for 
summer stoves, and English ladies seem to have worn it occasionally as a 
head-dress. Gerarde says :—‘‘Some have made hat-bands, girdles, and also 
bands to tie such things as they have before gathered, for the which purpose 
it most fitly serveth.” His description of the plant is very graphic: “Some 
pieces thereof are six or eight feet long, consisting, as it were, of many hairy 
leaves, set upon a tough string, very close couched, and compact together ; 
from which are also sent forth certaine other branches, like the first ; in 
sundrie places there be sent downe fine little strings, which serve instead of 
Iv.—21 
