66 



This species, which, without much reason, has obtained the name 

 of the Prickly Club-Moss, is widely distributed over the hilly districts 

 of the North of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. I have found 

 it in every part of the Snowdon range that 1 have visited ; also on Ca- 

 der Idris, in the Western Highlands of Scotland, and on Errigal and 

 other elevations in the County Donegal : and my correspondents have 

 kindly supplied me with such a host of habitats, that I am compelled 

 to limit the number given, on account of the space which the whole 

 would occupy. It delights in the vicinity of those little rills so com- 

 mon in all our hilly counties, and whose course is so often marked by 

 a sinuous line of vivid green, delighting the heart of the botanist, and 

 leading him on from crag to crag, regardless of the crumbling debris 

 and detached masses of stone w^hich in such spots too often give way 

 beneath his tread, and leap with awful bounds down the hill-side, till 

 they find a new resting-place in the abyss below. On such localities 

 has this interesting little plant fixed for its home, and here it may ever 

 be found, the companion of saxifrages and the rarer ferns. 



Lycopodium Selaginoides was well known to Ray, who considered 

 it generically distinct from all the other British Lycopodia,* in which 

 Dillenius appears to agree with him.f The figure % by Dillenius is 

 not inaccurate, but wants that elegance which is so characteristic of 

 the majority of his figures : the other figures of our earlier botanists 

 convey little or no idea of the characters of the plant. 



The roots are extremely slender, thread-like and fragile ; they take 

 but a slight hold on the crumbling soil in which this species is usu- 

 ally found. 



The stem is procumbent, very slender, weak, repeatedly branched, 

 the branches short and somewhat sinuous : the seed-beaiing spikes 

 are thrown up at intervals, generally two or three on each plant ; they 

 are subclavate and considerably thicker than the prostrate stem. 



The entire plant is clothed with lanceolate leaves, which are ser- 

 rated and almost jagged at their edges; those on the procumbent 

 slender portions of the stem are shorter, narrower and somewhat scat- 

 tered, while those on the spike, more properly termed bracts, are every 

 way larger and much broader at the base. 



The thecse are sessile at the base of the bracts, pale yellow and to- 

 lerably roxmd ; the upper ones contain the usual minute pollen-like 

 particles which have already been spoken of as the seeds of Lycopo- 

 dium clavatum, used under the name of 'plaun ' for the production 



* Synopsis, 106. f Hist. Muse. 460. j Id. tab. 68. 



