216 THE RING OF NATURE 



fact, can see it all and find it wonderfully inspiring 

 and interesting. 



No one needs to be told that the horse-tails are 

 survivals from a very ancient age. They existed, 

 as our coal-fields testify, long before anything in 

 the shape of flower came on the earth. Whatever 

 flower a horse-tail may be said to have, was the 

 only flower that could have been found when the 

 coal measures were being prepared. How just, 

 then, that the soul of man was not asked to expand 

 in such a world. 



The 'blossom' of the horse-tail looks like an 

 abortive shoot or a spray that some mischievous 

 barber has subjected to the operation of singeing. 

 The place of each jointed tress that gives the 

 horse-tail forest so much beauty is occupied by a 

 mere knob on the surface of the shoot. On closer 

 inspection, the knob is like a round-headed nail 

 driven into the stump, and on the under side of 

 the nail-head are placed little groups of spore- 

 cells containing a dust not unlike the pollen that 

 is in a hazel catkin or flies from the stinging- 

 nettle. It is not of course pollen, but each grain 

 is a spore from which the new plant springs in the 

 same mysterious way as a fern or a mushroom. 



Yet in these spores you can see the beginnings 

 of the higher system of reproduction. Under the 

 microscope they reveal an astonishing elaboration 

 of structure for such small things. Each has 

 four arms, long and clubbed at the end like the 

 antennae of butterflies, and usually worn wrapped 



