It is difficult to give the characters of a scientific family in a few simple words; but perhaps we may describe the living Lycopods as plants with creeping stems which divide and subdivide into two with great regularity, and which bear large numbers of very small pointed leaves closely arranged round the stem. The fruiting organs come at the tips of the branches, and sometimes themselves divide into two, and in these cone-like axes the spore cases are arranged, a single one on the upper side of each of the scales (see p. 67, fig. 46, A). In the Lycopods the spores are all alike, in the Selaginellas there are larger spores borne in a small number (four) in some sporangia (see fig. 53, p. 75), and others in large numbers and of smaller size on the scales above them. The stems are all very slender, and have no zones of secondary wood. They generally creep or climb, and from them are put out long structures something like roots in appearance, which are specially modified stem-like organs giving rise to roots. From the fossils of the Coal Measures _Lepidodendron_ must be chosen as the example for comparison. The different species of this genus are very numerous, and the various fossilized remains of it are among the commonest and best known of palæontological specimens. The huge stems are objects of public interest, and have been preserved in the Victoria Park in Glasgow in their original position in the rocks, apparently as they grew with their spreading rootlike organs running horizontally. A great stump is also preserved in the Manchester Museum, and is figured in the frontispiece. While among the casts and impressions the leaf bases of the plant are among the best preserved and the most beautiful (see fig. 93). The cone has already been illustrated (see fig. 46 and fig. 9), and is one of the best known of fossil fructifications. [Illustration: Fig. 93.—Photo of Leaf Bases of _Lepidodendron_ C, Scar of leaf; S, leaf base. In the scar: _v_, mark of severed vascular bundle, and _p_, of parichnos. _l_, Ligule scar.] From the abundant, though scattered material, fossil botanists have reconstructed the plants in all their detail. The trunks were lofty and of great thickness, bearing towards the apex a much-branched crown, the branches, even down to the finest twigs, all dividing into two equal parts. The leaves, as would be expected from the great size of the plants, were much bigger than those of the recent species (fig. 93 shows the actual size of the leaf bases), but they were of the same _relatively_ small size as compared with the stems, and of the same simple pointed shape. A transverse section across the apex of a fertile branch shows these closely packed leaves arranged in series round the axis, those towards the outside show the central vascular strand which runs through each. [Illustration: Fig. 94.—Section across an Axis surrounded by many Leaves, which shows their simple shape and single central vascular bundle _v_]