SOME FAIRY KICKERS. 
13 
long saw, armed on each edge with about 20 long teeth, 
a most formidable weapon. And a sword-fish, with its 
upper jaw elongated and compressed into the form of a sword 
or dagger. And—” 
Here Uncle Jed was interupted by the arrival of the ’bus 
which was to take me to the station. “Why!” he ex¬ 
claimed, ‘ ‘I have hardly made a beginning of my tale. Well 
you must come down again and I will tell you of many 
other fish as strange as these.” 
This I gladly promised to do, and as the train bore me 
rapidly back to the city, I thought upon the marvels to 
which I had listened, more than ever convinced that “truth 
is stranger than fiction,” and congratulating myself upon 
having heard that afternoon, a really true fish story . 
Some Fairy Kickers. 
BY WIEKIAM H. HUSE. 
ROM about the first of May till mid¬ 
summer the various species of scouring 
rushes or horse-tails, known to botanists as 
Equiseta, will fruit and scatter their spores 
upon the wind. No more amusing sight 
can be found in the vegetable world than 
these spores under a microscope of even 
low power. They are kickers par excel¬ 
lence and, like all such, provoke mirth. 
The fertile stems of the Equisetum arvense 
are the earliest to appear and are the most abundant near 
Manchester. The light brown, fertile stems with encir¬ 
cling, pointed sheaths, bear cone-like spikes composed of 
little scales that fit tightly together until the enclosed 
spores are mature. Each little globular spore has four fila¬ 
ments attached that are tightly wound about it until the 
spore is ripe and dry. Then they suddenly straighten 
