T40 ABOUT MOSSES AND LICHENS. [CHAP. 
pinum), and the Prickly Mountain-moss (Selaginella 
spinosa). All these are very humble plants, but they 
are the modern representatives of giants, the Lepzdo- 
dendra and Szgtllaria of the Carboniferous Period, 
which form a large portion of our coal. These 
Lepidodendra resembled the Club-mosses, whilst the 
Szgtllaria seem to have been a connecting link be- 
tween the Club-mosses and the Pine-trees. 
“ The Lepidodendrons are without doubt the splen- 
did old representatives of a family now dwindled 
down to such things as our club-mosses or Lycopo- 
diums. Now, it is a certain fact, which can be proved 
by the microscope, that a very great part of the best 
coal is actually made up of millions of the minute 
seeds of club-mosses, such as grow—a few of them, 
and those very small—on our moors; a proof, surely, 
not only of the vast amount of the vegetation in the 
coal-making age, but also of the vast time during 
which it lasted. The Lepidodendra may have been 
fifty or sixty feet high. There is not a Lycopodium 
in the world now, I believe, five feet high. But the 
club-mosses are now, in these islands and elsewhere, © 
lovers of wet and peaty soils, and so may their huger 
prototypes have been in the old forests of the coal” 
(Kingsley*), 
The spores of existing species form an unimportant 
article of commerce, under the popular name of 
“vegetable lightning ;” they are highly inflammable, 
and are used for the purpose of producing stage 
lichtning, hence the name. They are also used for 
coating pills, and are probably well known to young- 
| * Town Geology, pv. 128. 
