But, just as he had singled out, as his probable captor, one peculiarly unattractive-looking horseman, whose crimson sheepskin coat and long horsetail plume were streaming in the wind, and just as he had braced himself to meet the onset against the great "loess," or dirt-cliff, he felt a twitch at his black upper robe, and a low voice-a girl's, he was confident-said quickly: "Look not before nor behind thee, good O-lopun, but trust to my word and give a backward leap."
"Historic Girls"
E. S. Brooks
I once had difficulty in persuading another of my betters that if you repeat five shillings as often as there are hairs in a horse's tail, you do not multiply five shillings by a horsetail.
"A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II)"
Augustus de Morgan
Corn waving on the moorlands where naught but horsetail grew before, bluebells nodding on the fells, and yellow sunlight blazing in the ladyslipper flowers outside a house.
"Growth of the Soil"
Knut Hamsun