12 



the little creeks or inlets of salt-water rivers, where its unopened 

 spikes are not readily distinguishable from the leaves or barren 

 scapes of some of the smaller Junci, even after the white anthers 

 have begun to protrude, looking as if accidentally blown upon and 

 adhering to the supposed rushes. In such situations the plant has a 

 very slender habit, the culms being hardly thicker than ordinary 

 packthread or whipcord, when it is our var. B-, but in proportion as 

 the situation is more open and exposed, the grass assumes a stouter, 

 shorter, more rigid appearacce ; the spikes are then remarkably 

 incurved, and sometimes neai'ly as thick as an ordinary quill ; it is 

 then our var a., found in flat, open salt-marsh ground. 



Equisetum arvense. Abundant everywhere in wet, clayey or gra- 

 velly soil. A troublesome plant in damp corn-fields. Plentiful on 

 the banks of wet, slipped land along the Hampshire coast. 



Equisetum Telmateia (E. fluviatile, Sm., non Linn. ?). In marshy 

 or boggy and shady places, wet thickets, hollows, by river-sides, &c.; 

 frequent over the Isle of Wight and rest of the county. The authors 

 of the sixth edition of the * British Flora' are of opinion that the name 

 fluviatile should be retained, on the ground that it was imposed by 

 Linneus to designate a collective species, made up of the present 

 plant, and one of the forms or varieties of his E. limosum ; but is not 

 this a reason for rejecting the prior name of fluviatile, rather than for 

 adopting it? For it is plain, from its occurrence in his ' Flora Sue- 

 cica,' that Linneus meant to describe under the title of E. fluviatile a 

 species native to Sweden, which Wahlenberg distinctly tells us our 

 great Water Horsetail, the E. Telmateia of Ehrhart, is not* Now, 

 as in a collective species, one only of the names belonging to the duo 

 or trio of plants composing it can be adopted, 'it seems most fitting 

 and natural to retain the name of that constituent which the founder 

 of the collective species had in view as the best representative of such 

 species, and since in this case the type has been subsequently shown 

 to be a form or variety of another and recognized species (Linneus's 

 own E. limosum), it seems advisiable to abandon the name fluviatile 

 altogether, and adopt a new one, to obviate all chance of confusion in 

 time to come, and for this purpose Ehrhart's name is significant and 

 appropriate ; its Hellenic construction, though somewhat liors de 

 regie applied to a species, fis no very weighty objection, and has 

 many a precedent in its favour. 



* Itaque nostra planta longe dislat ab illo, piaeserlim HoUandico E. Telmateia, 

 Erhr., E, fluviatili, Anglor. in Suecia non observato. (Wablenb. Fl. Suec. edit, altera, 

 ii. p. 714). 



