QUILLWORT. 
385 
wildest mountain scenery. It is recorded as a native of North 
America. 
The figures by Dillenius^ are striking, but in some points 
scarcely accurate. That in the ‘ Flora Danica ’ f possesses 
none of the characteristics which distinguish the root of our 
British species, and this part of the drawing is either supplied 
from imagination or drawn from a species hitherto undiscovered 
in this country. The same observation applies to the figure of 
the capsule in ‘ English Botany,’ J where that part is represented 
as bivalved. Sir W. J. Hooker’s figure in the ‘Flora Londi- 
nensis ’ § is the best that I have seen, but in this there is an in- 
distinctness in the representation of the tuber. In Loudon’s 
‘ Encyclopcedia of Plants,’ || the capsule oi Pilularia is given as 
that of Isoetes, and that of the latter is entirely omitted. 
I quite concur with Sir J. E. Smith in believing this plant to 
be the Suhularia vulgaris erecta folio rigidissimo, and also the 
Suhularia fragilis folio longiore et ienuiore of Bay’s ‘ Synop- 
sis :’ H the plant introduced between these two appears to be 
the Littorella lacustris of modern nomenclature. Our plant 
was also the Calamistrum of several of the older writers, and 
the Calamaria of Dillenius.*^ It should, however, be observed 
that the three names— Calamistrum and Calamaria 
— appear to be used indifferently in various parts of the Linnean 
Correspondence. I believe all modern botanists are agreed on 
the name of Isoetes lacustris. 
With the exception of the observation of Dillenius already 
quoted, about fishes and bullocks, and a note in Sprengel im- 
plying that fishes root it out of the mud, I can find no informa- 
tion as to the uses or virtues of the Quillwort. Gerarde appears 
not to have known the plant, or he would doubtless have given 
us some account of its properties. 
The roots are three or four inches in length, flexible, semipel- 
lucid, of uniform substance, tubular, and sometimes dichoto- 
mously divided towards the extremity. They spring from a 
tuber, which, in mature plants, is about the size of a hazel-nut. 
* Hist. Muse. tab. 80, figs. 1 and 2. f Flor. Dan. 191. 
t Eng. Bot. 1084. § Flor. Lend. 131. jj Encycl. 894. 
Syn. 306, 307. ** Hist. Muse. 541. 
2 C 
