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turns to a yellowish-brown. If we break a closed cone across so 

 as to get a transverse view, we shall see the spore cases clustered 

 beneath the tiny caps to which they are attached, and looking a 

 good deal like sets of miniature molars, with broad, shallow 

 crowns and stout roots exposed. Later, after the spores have 

 been discharged, the snug, compact cone becomes a grinning skull 

 of emptiness, wherein the white, broken sporangia gleam for a 

 while like fangs in distended jaws. 



If we lay a mature but unopened spike upon a piece of paper, 

 the sporangia will shortly open and drop upon it myriads of pow- 

 dery green spores. It requires a microscope to reveal the peculiar 

 structure of these minute bodies. Each of them is enwrapped 

 with two tiny straps called e letters, which coil and uncoil under 

 the alternating influences of moisture and dryness. If, now, we 

 breathe a long breath upon our heap of spores, a scene of liveliest 

 activity ensues, of which even a pocket lens may enable us to be 

 witnesses; for all the little straps are set twirling by the moisture 

 and in a moment the whole mass is jumping, squirming and twist- 

 ing, like a disturbed ant-hill. 



As the fertile stems mature, the sterile shoots begin to push 

 up into the light and air— green little sprouts, with ruffled whorls 

 of budding branches. These do not attain their growth until 

 some time after the fertile shoots have vanished from the earth. 

 By following the stems down to their points of origin under- 

 ground, we shall find that both sorts spring from the same sub- 

 terranean stem or rootstock — the perennial portion of the horse- 

 tail — and in reality form with the rootstock parts of one organism. 

 Different in aspect and character, the two kinds of stems also 

 perform two quite different functions — the fertile living merely to 

 produce spores and then quickly withering away, while the sterile, 

 which are more persistent, labor throughout the spring in the 

 workshop of their green branches to manufacture the plant's nour- 

 ishment for the coming year. The food supply thus accumulated 

 and stored away in the underground stem, keeps the perennial 

 part of the plant alive during the fall and winter, and provides 

 the fertile shoot with energy wherewith to fulfill its life-office in 

 the chill days of early spring. 



The range of Equisetum arvense extends throughout North 

 America from the latitude of Virginia northward to the Arctic 

 ocean, but is most abundant eastward. It is also a denizen of 

 Europe and Asia. In England, where it is often a good deal of a 



