Sir James Smith justly says of this, certainly the finest of the 
British Horse-tails, “found here and there in watery places, 
about the sheltered banks of rivers, where its large, long, 
branched stems, often six feet high, make a magnificent and 
Indian-like appearance/’ 
The branches are in dense whorls and very slender. The 
fertile stems are very different from the sterile, rarely a foot 
high, very stout, destitute of branches, and covered wdth large, 
slightly inflated, lax, striated sheaths, terminated by numerous, 
subulate, brown, persistent teeth. The species appears to be 
common on the continent of Europe, extending to Norway and 
Lapland in the north, particularly abundant in Russia and Si¬ 
beria, in the southern Taurus, etc. It is found in Madeira, in 
North Africa, Algeria, but from no country have I received finer 
and more numerous specimens than from North-west America, 
from California to 49° of north latitude, in British Columbia 
{Dr. Lyall). Dr. Beck, in his ‘ Botany of the Northern and 
Middle States of North America,’ is the first, I believe, to re¬ 
cord this plant as a native of the United States. He gives, 
“ Buffalo, New York, and the shores of Lake Ontario.” Dr. 
Asa Gray, under the name of eburneum. , in his ‘ Flora of the 
North United States,’ gives it as inhabiting the shores of the 
Great Lakes, and northward ; and his description clearly indi¬ 
cates the species he intends. But I presume it is rare, for I have 
never had the good fortune to receive a specimen, either from 
the United States, or from Canada, or from the Hudson’s Bay 
possessions, except from the region westward of the Rocky 
Mountains. In a sample I possess from Germany, a barren, 
much-branched frond, bears a fertile spike. 
Plate 58. Portion of a sterile and of a fertile stem of Equisetum Telmateja, 
Ehrli.,—natural size. Fig. 1. Peltate scale, with its involucres, from the spike. 
2. A spore, as it is commonly considered, with its spiral clavate filaments. 3. 
Portion of a transverse section of the stem, to show the lacunes magnified. 
