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ANCIENT EQUISETUMS.

remains of these in the fossil state are found in various strata, and at varied depths in the earth; their substance as vegetables gone of course, and earthy matter substituted in its place, but their forms as well preserved as to show in the clearest manner what they have been. These though simple cellular plants, like the dwarfs of our own times, have rivalled in height the tallest of the vascular trees that now adorn our forests; and suggest a comparison with those lofty and lasting tree ferns which are still found in the southerly tropical latitudes of our globe. There is little doubt that these mighty plants were aquatic, and it is probable that they lasted for years; whereas the stems or fronds of the present ones are all annual. Along with them there occur the remains of animals, many of them evidently aquatic, and others probably fitted for the land and water, or even for the water and the air. Their situation in the solid strata shows that they were long anterior to the elephants, the rhinoceri, the hyænas, and the other mammalia of warm countries at the present day, all of which appear also to have been extinct before the earliest record of human history commenced. point to strange and remote changes in the economy of our globe; but they are dark and shadowy, not explainable in a satisfactory manner, even by those who treat expressly of them; and therefore quite unfit subjects for an incidental notice.

These

The equisetums are plants of humid places, and bring us to the margin of the waters; and there are some spring flowers in the water itself, or rather blooming over its surface. One of the earliest, and

WATER MARIGOLD.

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also most showy, is the marsh marigold, (Caltha palustris,) which is really a very gay flower, and the plant bearing it has large and handsome leaves. It is a very common plant on the still parts of brooks, the margins of pools, and other places where the water is shallow, and not much agitated or disturbed; but the plant is always most healthy, and the flowers most beautiful, when it is over a rivulet of clear spring water. The flower is large, and of a bright yellow colour; and the leaves of the plant are full and abundant. Its similarity in form to the common buttercup of the meadow will prevent any one from mistaking it; and, indeed, there is no plant in the least like it upon the margin of the water. It comes into flower in March, sooner or later, according to the place and the season; and it continues producing a succession of flowers on the same plant for six weeks or two months. The young flower-buds are in the form of little compact buttons, often standing round a full blown one, on which account the country people, in some places, call them "mother and children." These young buttons of the flowers are sometimes pickled, and used in the same manner as capers; and when pickled they have very considerable pungency. Indeed, they are abundantly pungent whether they are pickled or not; and we think it would be just as conducive to health to leave them alone as ornaments to the margins of the streams.

They belong to the Ranunculacea, a very numerous, and often a very showy race of plants; but under all circumstances a very suspicious one. All of them are acrid, and some are deadly poisons, capable of occasion

ing death very speedily, and attended by the most afflicting symptoms. One of the most deadly of the race is the common monk's-hood of the gardens, which ought not to be allowed to remain in any place to which children have access, notwithstanding the readiness of its growth, and the whimsical form of its flowers. An instance was mentioned in the public journals not long ago, of a girl who used to resort to this plant in order to bring on a frantic kind of intoxication; but an over-dose either nearly or altogether ended her life, we forget which. We, in concert with a medical man of much skill and experience, and who was a good botanist, and had studied the vegetable poisons, had great trouble in recovering a servant girl from the effects of a very little bit of the root, which had been most inconsiderately, but with no bad intention, given to her by the gardener. When the aged men of Ceas were no longer of any use to the state, the inhuman law enacted that they should drink this same deadly aconite. The hellebores are also very poisonous plants; and even the larkspurs and columbines have mischief in them, and are not to be tampered with by the ignorant.

The whole of the Ranunculacea lie under the same suspicion: and, contrary to the usual one among plants, the water ranunculus is one of the least acrid of the whole. The common buttercup, which makes the meadows so gay, and is gathered with so much avidity by children, is very acrid, so much so, that it is sometimes called "wart grass," from a belief, real or unfounded we know not, that the juice

of the bruised leaves soon clears the skin of these excrescences. The vulgar notion, that the colour of its beautiful yellow flower is communicated to butter in the season of its bloom, is of course quite unfounded, as it is one of the plants which the cows avoid eating, if they can.

The anemones are also poisonous, and so are the different kinds of clematis; and although the latter are much used in trimming bowers and trellises, it is very doubtful whether they do not, one and all, give an unhealthy character to the air. One species of anemone is a Spring flower, upon high and open chalky pastures. This is the Pasche flower, or Easter flower, (Anemone pulsatilla) which is a very acrid one, and blooms about the time of the festival after which it gets its common name. The flowers of most of the tribe, and the roots of some of them, furnish dyes, the mordant for fixing which is the sulphate of alumina, or common alum. In this way the marsh marygold furnishes not a disagreeable yellow.

Such are a few, and but a very few of the Spring flowers; for even among the native plants of Britain, the ones which we have passed unnoticed outnumber what we have noticed a hundred to one. In the noticed ones, we have not been solicitous to select the most interesting ones. We wished to show that common ones have some interest, and so get the reader fairly out into the field, to find and enjoy the fine ones for himself.

CHAPTER VII.

INFLUENCE OF THE SPRING UPON ANIMALS.

THE influence of the Spring upon every creature is great in proportion to the excitability of that creature, that is, to the number and activity of those feelings or perceptions, or whatsoever else they may be called, upon which the genial renovation can produce an effect, wherewithal the Creator has endowed it. We have already considered the adaptation and preparing of the vegetable tribes for this delightful time of the year. It may seem that we ought to have followed this up by a description of the effect of Spring upon them. This, however, could be done only partially; and it would not be fair, for it would be robbing the reader of one of the most pleasurable and profitable uses of his own senses. The breath of Spring is more fresh in the nostril than the richest perfumes of the Summer; the springing blade and the opening bud are more delightful to the eye, and more redolent of hope to the mind, than the expanded leaf and the full-blown flower; and the music of the Spring is nature's peculiar music,— as if the whole terrestrial creation were a harp newly strung, to be touched in the most joyous strain, in a