THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB. 207
Clere family (temp. Edward I.) figured in Chancellor's "Ancient Sepulchral
Monuments of Essex," plates 33 and 34. Several members climbed up to the
top of the tower to view the fine landscape, extending over a great part of
Essex.
On the pleasant greensward in front of the picturesque old church (both in
the very centre of the camp) the party then gathered together, augmented
by a scattered fringe of curious visitors, to be photographed by Mr. Spalding,
and to hear Dr. Taylor deliver one of his delightful scientific "lay sermons."
Considerable regret was felt that time did not allow of a more extended treat-
ment of his subject, which was :—
"The Origin of our Native Plants."
For the purpose of illustration, the specimens gathered during the ramble
were laid upon the table in front of the lecturer. Many of them were quite
"common objects of the country," Horsetails (Equisetum), Bracken-fern, Bryonia,
Black Bryony (Tamus), Spurges, Ranunculi, Polygalia, &c., &c, but they served as
texts for the discourse. Where, asked Dr. Taylor, did our common wild flowers
come from ? It is very certain they did not originate in the British Islands. We
have not a single flowering plant which is peculiar to this country. The only
original flora of England exists in the fossil state. Our oldest flowering plants
are found in the pipeclays of Bournemouth, and they are allied to, if not iden-
tical with, the flora which now characterises Australia and New Zealand. But
there were some common flowerless plants, such as the horse-tails and brackens,
which had a high geological antiquity in this country. In the Upper Old Red
sandstones of Kilkenny, in Ireland, which were deposited in a large fresh water
lake before the commencement of the Carboniferous epoch, there were found
fossil ferns, club mosses (Lycopodium), and plants allied to the quillworts
(Isoetes) ; and if we rambled around Windermere Lake at the present time we
should find in the woods the royal flowering fern, or Osmunda, which could hardly
be differentiated from the fossil ferns imbedded in the Kilkenny sandstones.
There also are found growing miniature groves of the wood horsetail (Equisetum
sylvaticum), whilst in the shallow waters, where the green meadows border the
lake, would be found abundance of living quillworts (Isoetes), so that in this
respect our famous English lake as regards its flowerless vegetation resembled
that which existed in Ireland in Devonian times. Our bracken fern, so abun-
dant on all commons and heaths, and by our hedgerows, could hardly be distin-
guished from the abundant fossil fern (Alethopiris) found in the Coal Measures,
and there was hardly any doubt it was its lineal descendant. Bracken ferns
identical in all but a trifling particular with our own, were as abundant in the
wild bush of Australia as on our English commons. Their wide geographical
distribution proved the enormous geological antiquity of these common plants.
The bracken was found not only in Australia, but in New Zealand, in all
the great Atlantic islands, near the Cape, in the northern parts of the
United States, and even near the equator. No fern in all the world was
so widely distributed. Dr. Taylor gave his reasons for believing that the
ancient terrestrial, flowerless flora of our planet was a modification of aquatic
plants ; and showed that the sperm cells of mosses, ferns and others were still pos-
sessed of aquatic locomotive organs which were very possibly relics of their ancient
aquatic mode of life. Turning to the floweringplants, and producing a specimen of
the White Bryony, he asked what it was doing here. We had only one species. It
belonged to an abundantly represented tropical order of plants—that of the
Gourds ; and it was as singular to find it in our hedgerows as it would be to
find a Chinese family settled in an English village. The same thing might be
said of the Black Bryony, which belonged to another tropical order—that of the
Yams. Our English Spurges were dwarfed representatives of gigantic tropical
relations, such as the indiarubber and gutta-percha trees. Even our common and
too-abundant nettles were herbaceous modifications of the family to which they