Every one knows those marsh-plants with hollow, channelled, and articulated cylindrical stems; whose joints are furnished with a membranous, denticulated sheath, and which bear the vulgar name of “mare’s-tail;” their fructification forming a sort of catkin composed of many rings of scales, carrying on their lower surface sacs full of _spores_ or seeds. These humble _Equiseta_ were represented during the Coal-period by herbaceous trees from twenty to thirty feet high and four to six inches in diameter. Their trunks, channelled longitudinally, and divided transversely by lines of articulation, have been preserved to us: they bear the name of _Calamites_. The engraving (Fig. 38) represents one of these gigantic mare’s-tails, or Calamites, of the Coal-period, restored under the directions of M. Eugene Deslongchamps. It is represented with its fronds of leaves, and its organs of fructification. They seem to have grown by means of an underground stem, while new buds issued from the ground at intervals, as represented in the engraving. The _Lycopods_ of our age are humble plants, scarcely a yard in height, and most commonly creepers; but the Lycopodiaceæ of the ancient world were trees of eighty or ninety feet in height. It was the _Lepidodendrons_ which filled the forests. Their leaves were sometimes twenty inches long, and their trunks a yard in diameter. Such are the dimensions of some specimens of _Lepidodendron carinatum_ which have been found. Another Lycopod of this period, the _Lomatophloyos crassicaule_, attained dimensions still more colossal. The _Sigillarias_ sometimes exceeded 100 feet in height. Herbaceous Ferns were also exceedingly abundant, and grew beneath the shade of these gigantic trees. It was the combination of these lofty trees with such shrubs (if we may so call them), which formed the forests of the Carboniferous period. The trunks of two of the gigantic trees, which flourished in the forests of the Carboniferous period, are represented in Figs. 39 and 40, reduced respectively to one-fifth and one-tenth the natural size. [Illustration: Fig. 38.--Calamite restored. Thirty to forty feet high.]