26 



so shattered that I could make little of them : those who may have 

 entrusted well dried Equiseta to the tender care of the post-office, 

 may in some measure imagine how they would travel from DunkeiTon 

 to London in a thin sheet of letter paper. When Mr. S. P. Wood- 

 ward was on the botanical tour, an account of which was subse- 

 quently published in the ' Phytologist,' he visited Dr. Taylor, and 

 procured more perfect specimens of the plant — and these he has 

 since obligingly shown me. From an examination of them, I enter- 

 tain much doubt whether they are strictly identical with the true E. 

 fluviatile, so common about London, but as yet I am not in posses- 

 sion of characters whereby to separate the two as species. I learn 

 that this Equisetum grows in boggy ground, on the hills, in the 

 neighbourhood of Dunkerron, in such vast abundance, as to be cut 

 and made into ricks, as winter fodder for cattle. At the time of Mr. 

 Woodward's visit to Dunkerron, he saw several of these ricks. I am 

 told that the stem is always simple, i. e., without branches, and that 

 the plant does not grow in the water, which the Equisetum fluviatile 

 of Linneus, whether branched or unbranched, certainly does. 



I had no knowledge of this Irish plant until after I had printed 

 that portion of my ' History of British Ferns,' in which the Equise- 

 taceae are described ; yet meagre as was ray information respecting it, 

 I could not pass it by when completing the Synopsis, which, although 

 placed in the work before the descriptions, was written and printed 

 last of all : a notice of the plant was therefore introduced — I confess 

 a most vague and unsatisfactory one, but it communicated all 1 knew 

 then, and all that I know up to the present hour. I am induced to 

 recur to the subject on the present occasion, because in the review of 

 my 'History of British Fenis,' which has just appeared in the 

 ' Annals,' and for which I feel much indebted to the author (whom I 

 presume to be Mr. Babington), this Equisetum is again brought 

 under notice. " Before proceeding," says the reviewer, " we may 

 state that Fries distinguishes the two Linnaean plants, saying of 

 E. limosum, ' ramulis vagis Isevibus vaginis viridi-dentatis ' and of 

 E. fluviatile ' vaginis raraul, atris' (H. Scan, 155) ; he considers both 

 of them as more or less constantly branching, nor can we agree with 

 Mr. Newman's observation (at page 7), that the limosum (Linn.) 

 never branches. At that page he separates the unbranched form of 

 the British E. limosum from E. fluviatile, but does not characterize 

 it, only stating, we think, incorrectly, that it ' never, under any cir- 

 cumstances, becomes branched.'" The state of the case is this, at 

 page 51, I figure and describe a very common species of Equisetum, 



