42 WILD FLOWERS. 



slimy waters, and yet more slimy earth, where des- 

 ported the huge Sauroids of the Secondary Period. 

 The mighty Plesiosauri, Phytosauri, Negalosauri, 

 or Hylceosauri, whose titles we write with labour- 

 ing pen, as a scattered few amongst the ruthlessly 

 hard names with which geologists have loaded these 

 extinct creatures, as if in ghastly mockery of their 

 cumbrous proportions. 



We must not, however, conclude that none of 

 these plants now attain to a greater size than that 

 which we are accustomed to see in our northern cli- 

 mate. When Dodonseus wrote that the horsetail of 

 Olympus had a stalk as big as a man's arm, his 

 addition that it produced berries which had the 

 flavour of mulberry-juice did not appear necessary 

 to confirm the whole account as a fable ; and when 

 Bellonius in his " Singularities/' described these, as 

 well as a species found near Eagusa, as growing to 

 the height of a plane-tree, he was but supposed to 

 have exaggerated the account of the first writer, 

 whom he had followed: and the supposition was 

 correct, as the climate indicated is incapable of 

 producing, in such luxuriance, plants which pre- 

 eminently require heat and moisture for BO full a 

 development. In Brazil, however, where .these con- 

 ditions are fulfilled, Gardner actually found them 

 attaining to a height of fifteen feet,* or five feet 

 beyond that which M. Brongniart gives, as the 

 greatest height discovered amongst the fossil spe- 

 cies. It is, however, to be remembered, that while 



* Between Ouro Preto and Eio de Janeiro ; " Travels in 

 Brazil." 



