GREAT EQUISETUM. 
71 
says that horses will not eat the plant at all if they can get any- 
thing else. On the occasion of my first visit to the Norwood 
station, there were three half-starved cadger’s horses on the waste 
ground where the Equisetum is growing : they devoured eagerly 
the coarse sour herbage growing about the pond, and almost 
every green leaf they could find ; indeed it seemed as though 
they seldom had an opportunity of making a meal, but they per- 
tinaciously refused to touch the Equisetum. 
The representations of this plant generally fail to give a correct 
idea of its figure, from the circumstance that the summit of the 
stem is alone given ; in other respects those in ‘ English Bo- 
j tany,’* ** Bolton’s Filices,’t and Dietrich’s ' Cryptogamia of Ger- 
I many,I are tolerably correct. 
It has already been shown that the nomenclature of this spe- 
cies is somewhat confused, but I trust that botanists generally 
will agree with me in restoring the earliest (binominal) name. 
There is little doubt of its being the E. majus of Bay§ and of 
Gerarde,|| the E. Telmateia of Ehrhart,H the E, ehurneum of 
Roth,^* who himself acknowledges it to be Ehrhart’s E. Tel- 
mateia^ and, finally, the E. Jiuviatile of Smith, Hooker and 
Babington, and of many continental botanists, but I think not 
of Hudson’s ^ Flora Anglica,’ as cited by Mr. Babington, who, 
in his zeal to ^‘prevent confusion,” has, I fear, indiscreetly ad- 
ded to the confusion already existing.ft Hudson does not seem 
to have known the plant now under consideration. It also ap- 
pears clear that it was totally unknown to Linneus, and, conse- 
quently, neither named nor alluded to in any of his works. 
The names given by Ray, Gerarde, and other authors antece- 
dent to Linneus, being dropped by universal consent, we una- 
voidably arrive at Ehrhart’s name of Telmateia, published fifty- 
five years ago. Ehrhart’s names were never, I believe, intended 
by their author as specific names, and, moreover, have been re- 
jected as fanciful by many of our later botanists ; but the latter 
objection scarcely holds good in any instance, and certainly not 
* Eng. Bot. 2022. f Bolt. Fil. tab. 36 & 37. I Deut. Krypt. Gew. pi. 5. 
§ Ray, Syn. 130. |1 Ger. Em. 1113. ^ Ehrli. Beitrage, ii. 159. 
** Roth. Catal. i. 129. if See Manual of British Botany, p. 379. 
