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by Apothecaries to keep pills from sticking together. They have such a 
strong repulsive power, that if the hand is powdered with them, it can be 
dipped in water without becoming wet. ” M. J. Berkly. Maun. Trea. Bot. 2. 703. 
Found in Lord Auckland’s group and Campbell’s Island in 52° South, by 
Sir Joseph Hooker, at a considerable elevation on the hills. 
“In hilly pastures and heaths, in Central and Northern Europe, 
Russian Asia, and North America, extending from the Pyrenees and the Alps 
to the Arctic regions, and in the Southern hemisphere, generally distributed 
over Britain, but more common in the North.” Bentham 1. c. 
230 Lycopodium complanatum, Linn. 
Willd. 1. c. 19. Hooker. FI. Ant. 1. 112, 113 and 114. Hook, and Bauer, t. 
117. A. C. P. 3489. Horton Plains with the preceding. Thw. En. 377. 
‘ £ This is a very widely diffused plant throughout the temperate and Arctic 
regions of Europe, Asia, and America ; we possess specimens of a very similar, 
if not the same species, from upper India and the Peninsula of Hindostan, 
as also from Jamaica, from Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Caracas and Brazil, it 
is the L. thuyoides. H. B. K.” Hooker FI. Aut. 1. 112. This is not a British 
plant. It is evidently a very rare plant in Ceylon. 
231. Lycopodium cernuum, Linn. 
FI. Zeyl. No. 387. and Herb. Herm. Willd. 1. c. 30. Burm. Thea. 144. t. 
66. Hooker 1. c. 1 14-5. 
Badal-wanassa, Wil-wanassa, Sinhalese. The “Goldsmith’s Destroyer” in 
Ceylon. 
This species “may be considered the type of another natural section ; it is 
perhaps the most abundant species of the genus, throughout the tropics especial- 
ly, probably covering more space than any two others. There are specimens 
from “no less than fifty different stations, and seventy collectors, preserved in the 
Hookerian Herbarium ; its Northern limit seems to be lat 39°, where it is 
found in the Azores Islands (in the neighbourhood of warm springs, M. J. B. ) 
and its Southern the Cape Colony and St. Paul’s ; this, like several other 
very widely diffused species, does not inhabit the Australian continent, as 
far as I am aware,” Hooker. 1. c. It has been sent to me from Queensland, 
land called L. uliginosum. 
“All the species of the Cernuum group are robust in habit, erect, gene- 
rally tall, copiously branched with their branches spreading on all sides; the 
spikes are sessile and very numerous, their mode of growth sufhsces to dis- 
tinguish them from the Annotinum section.” Hooker 1. c. This is a very abun- 
dant plant in marshy and low grounds in various portions of the Western 
and Central Provinces, and some years ago large fields of it grew in the Cinna- 
mon Gardens, Colombo. It is found also on the faces of cabook and other 
cuttings in the same places, and in this case is a spreading procumbent plant. 
It is the best known and most abundant plant used for the decoration of 
ball rooms and other festive occasions in Ceylon, and is generally mixed 
with 216 and 217, Lygodium scandeus, and L. pinnatifidum, and Gleichenia 
dichotoma for these purposes ; but it is regretted that it has been so per- 
severingly rooted out for this purpose without a thought of leaving some 
plants to enable it to grow and spread, that it is now becoming a scarce plant 
near Colombo. It is a current belief amongst the Sinhalese that one of the 
Kings of Kandy employed an eminent goldsmith to imitate this plant in 
o-old or silver, and that after he had done so the King killed him, to 
prevent his making imitations for any other person, hence the plant is called 
the “ Goldsmith's Destroyer .” (See Lyel’s Principles of Geology, p. 594 
for geological facts connected with this species. ) 
53 ’. Lycopodium Carolinianum, Linn. 
Willd. 1. c. 14. Flora of Mauritius and the Seychelles, Baker, p. 520. 
C. P. 1416. Dr. Thwait’S gives Pedurutalagala, at an elevation of 7,000 feet, 
as the habitat of this plant. I found it not uncommon on moist grassy places 
in different parts of the plain in Nuwara Eliya. The main stems spread flat 
