HORSE-TAILS 217 



round the body like the threads of a screw. But 

 at fruiting time, the arms straighten out and then 

 coil slightly again, so that two or three neighbour- 

 ing spores link arms with one another, and thus 

 leave the parent plant and try their poor luck 

 at spreading the species. 



That was the flowering plan, if such it can be 

 called, favoured by all the trees and plants in the 

 age when the horse-tail was at its best. It was 

 the good old plan that had been in vogue for the 

 last million years, and not to be altered by such 

 conservatives as our friends in the swamp. 



Our friends were to have the opportunity of 

 learning, however, that nothing lives for itself 

 alone. The accumulation of nitrogen and other 

 valuables in the sporangia attracted something 

 to feed upon them. We cannot say what the 

 somethings were. They were earlier than the 

 fly, and bearing the same relation to a fly of to-day 

 that the horse-tail bears to an orchid. Here was 

 an evil thing only to be met by a victim so 

 helpless as a vegetable by passive resistance. 



So the old horse-tails found. Not so the new 

 horse-tails, the degenerate ones willing to com- 

 promise with the enemy, to throw away their 

 proud exclusive state and enter into trade relations 

 with the insect scum that could not yet be called 

 flies even, let alone bees and butterflies. Thus 

 from the greed of the insects grew not only the 

 illimitable improvement of the flowers, but the 

 beatification of the insects and the education of 



