azine can distinguish for themselves from furze or gorse, preserves for us in fuller detail certain intermediate stages in this evolutionary history. For in broom, most of the foliage is trefoil throughout; but the upper branches have often solitary leaves, flat and narrow like the intermediate form on the gorse-bush. This last is also the commonest type in most species of genistas. We may therefore say that gorse begins life as a generalized or undifferentiated pea-flower; next, passes through a condition analogous to that of the trefoil bearing greenhouse genista; afterward resembles its unarmed ally, the English broom; and finally develops its own characteristic and specific features as a fully armed furze-bush. Only, the stages which occupy the broom for the whole of its lifetime are telescoped, as it were, in the gorse into the first three weeks of its infant existence. 66 plant, continually exposed on open plains or hills to the attacks of browsing herbivores. Like the licensed victuallers, it takes for its motto " Defence not Defiance." It sacrifices the advantages of a broad flat leaf, and puts up with the discomfort of small pointed narrow ones, because it finds protection against enemies is more important for a shrub which occupies its station in life than expanded feeding-surface. Appetite would naturally lead it to have leaves like a laburnum; necessity compels it to clothe itself instead in short and stubbly prickles. You may regard it, in fact, as a sort of vegetable hedgehog-a bristling plant-porcupine. Like the medieval baron in his hill-top stronghold, gorse is more intent upon the problem of defence than upon the gratification of a native love for air and sunshine, food and drink in abundance. If you look at a gorse-bush in summer or winter, you will observe at once that it is green all over. The short spiky branches are very much the same in color and texture as the short spiky leaves which grow threateningly out from them. That is to say, the plant makes up for the want of flat and expanded foliage by utilizing the branches as subsidiary digestive organs. Every part alike is engaged in drinking in the floating carbonic acid; every part alike is full of green chlorophyll-the active agent of plant digestion. Both in leaves and branches, when the sunlight falls upon them, the process of assimilation goes on uninterruptedly. Thus gorse makes up in the number and intricacy of its busy green spikes for the lack of any large and expanded drinking-surface. To put it briefly, it is mouth and stomach all over. Leaves are the mouths and stomachs of plants. Their business is to drink in the floating carbonic acid of the air, and to digest it, under the influence of sunlight, so as to turn it from inorganic into organic matter. Now, if you imagine yourself a plant for a moment, you must see at once that by far the most convenient and natural form for your leaves to assume, under ordinary circumstances, is that of a flat extended blade, as in the oak, the beech, the bean, or the lily. This shape clearly allows the greatest possible development of absorptive surface; it gives plenty of room for thousands of the tiny mouths or stomata-microscopic throats, guarded by miniature lips, which open in fit weather and suck in whatever particles of carbonic acid may happen to pass their way. It also affords a broad expanse of green cells About its second or third year, the for the sunlight to fall upon, and so to young furze-bush begins to blossom. effect that disintegration of the ele- Apparertly, to the unobservant eye of ments of carbonic acid which is the the ordinary townsman, it proceeds to prime function of vegetable life. So flower thenceforth all the year round obviously sensible and useful is this flat without any interruption. In reality, form of leaf that no plant in its right however, it does nothing of the sort. mind ever dreams of discarding it ex- And here I will venture to expound to cept for some good and sufficient reason. you why it is that gorse is never out of And such good and sufficient reason blossom, and kissing accordingly never the furze-bush has for rejecting and dis- out of fashion. The fact is, there are carding it. Gorse is no fool; it knows in England two distinct species of its own business. It has found out ex- furze, superficially indistinguishable to actly what tactics suit a north-European the unlearned eye, but quite well marked when once the difference between them has been pointed out to you. The first is the great or winter gorse, with pale yellow flowers. This is a tall and bushy shrub, very woody at the base, and covered all over with soft down or hair, especially on the bark of the larger branches. It begins to blossom in early autumn, straggles on as best it may through the winter season, puts out fresh masses of bloom on every sunny day in December and January, and continues on through spring or early summer. Indeed, one may see it in the depth of winter with hoar-frost coating its bold yellow blossoms. The second kind is the dwarf or summer gorse a much smaller plant, less bushy and more creeping; it has fewer hairs and brighter green leaves; its flowers are smaller, of a deeper golden yellow, and it likewise differs in certain technical points about the calyx and bracts which the natural benevolence of my character prevents me from inflicting on unbotanical readers. This smaller species begins to flower in early summer, just about the time when the greater gorse leaves off, and it continues in blossom through July, August, and September, till the greater gorse is ready to start again. The one plant blooms from October till May, the other takes up the running from May till October. Confining ourselves for the present to the great winter gorse, we may notice for ourselves on any heath or common that it is a tall, stout bush, five or six feet in height, and ferociously prickly. By origin, it is entirely a west-European plant, extending from Ireland to central Germany; but it can stand neither extreme heat nor extreme cold; it hardly extends to the highlands of Scotland, and is unknown in Scandinavia-else how should we have that pretty legend of Linnæus? But on the other hand it never reaches the Mediterranean region, where its place is taken by prickly genistas and other southern pea flowers. Heat bakes it, cold chills it; it loves the intermediate. climate of Britain and Belgium. In one word, the greater gorse is a specialized form well adapted to survive on the open and defenceless moors of north-western Europe. For that world it was developed; in that world alone does it thrive and maintain itself. As usual, however, let it defend itself as it may, man has found out a plan to utilize it as fodder for his own purposes. Sheep-farmers burn it down to the ground, when its stems become too high and woody. The plant then sends up green succulent shoots from the uninjured root-stock; and these shoots, though already somewhat coarse and prickly, are eaten by sheep in default of better forage. Thus it comes about that gorse of one kind or another is never out of blos- As autumn comes on, the great gorse som. Careless observers, not distin- prepares itself for its flowering season. guishing between these two allied but If you examine the boughs in October, distinct species, have come to the con- you will find them thickly covered with clusion that one and the same plant is tiny brown buds in all stages of developperpetually in flower. This is the less ment. This is the less ment. Some are just ready to open; to be wondered at as the two often grow others are still in the first wee pin-head together over miles of waste land on stage of their existence. The plant heaths and commons. But their effect arranges things so of set purpose. It when in flower is really very different: wishes to flower from time to time the great gorse has its pale yellow blos- through the winter season; and it gradsoms scattered irregularly in patches uates its buds so that some will be in a on the round top of the bushes; the fit state to take advantage of every fine dwarf summer gorse, on the other spell in the frostiest weather. Why it hand, has them arranged in close, up- should choose this curious time for flowright spikes, very thick and regular. ering I will point out a little later; for The larger sort makes the more effec- the present it will be enough to call attive masses on a big scale in the land- tention to the fact that due provision is scape; the smaller looks daintier and made beforehand for a long blossoming prettier on a very close view, especially season. The buds, as I mentioned just when intermixed, as it often is, with now, are brown and velvety; and the ling and Scotch heather. brownness is due to the numerous little hairs with which the two-lipped calyx that encloses the unopened flower is thickly studded. The point of these hairs is to prevent flying insects from laying their eggs on the bud, and encouraging their young grubs to feed on the nutritious little pollen-masses with. in them. If you look close, indeed, you will see that the hairs cluster thickest at the top, which is just the part where such flying insects always lay their eggs on the buds of defenceless species. As usual, we see the plot and counterplot of nature. The plant wants the pollen for its own fertilization. The insect tries to steal it as food for its young. The plant keeps it out by a protective covering. Till the blossom is ready to unfold on some warm winter day, the two lips of the calyx remain so tightly closed that you can separate them with difficulty. But when the right moment arrives, the bud, which has been waiting for some sunny morning, opens blithely of itself and displays a flower of the common papilionaceous or pea-blossom type. The mode of its fertilization in the gorse-blossom, however, as in the flower of the broom and some allied bushes, is both curious and interesting. The keel or lower portion of the corolla consists of two united and soldered petals, flanked by what are technically known as the wings. At the base of this keel are two little rounded knobs or projections, one on either side, so shaped as exactly to fit the front legs of the bee as he settles upon the blossom. They afford, in point of fact, a convenient landingstage, like the step of an omnibus. But the whole lower part of the flower is loosely hinged to the standard or upper portion; and as the bee alights on it, his weight bends it suddenly down, so that the whole keel bursts open elastically, and dusts him all over with the fertilizing pollen. When he flies away again, the keel and wings do not return. to their original position, but hang loosely downward. The inquiring bee, on his collecting rounds, can thus see at a glance whether any particular flower has been "sprung" or not, as we technically call it. This saves him much time, for he doesn't have to go poking his proboscis into blossoms which may turn out to have been already rifled. It also serves the plant's purpose equally well, as it makes the bee attend strictly to business, instead of fooling about among flowers which have already shed their pollen and already been fertilized. It is a case, in short, of mutual accommodation. If you depress the keel of a gorseblossom with your finger, you can see for yourself how it opens elastically and puffs out a little shower of copious yellow pollen. This trick it shares with several other bushy pea-flowers. But the common little English birdsfoot trefoil, a herb of the same family, has invented and patented a still more advanced device which is a distinct improvement upon the method pursued by the brooms and furzes. In birdsfoot trefoil and the group to which it belongs, the keel, instead of being blunt as in gorse, is narrow and sharplypointed. The stamens shed their pollen beforehand into the tip of this keel. There are a pair of knobs, as before, for the bee to alight upon; but his weight, instead of bursting open the flower with a pop, merely depresses it a little, and pumps out the pollen, which is rather viscid than powdery, against his hairy bosom. The end of the keel is purposely perforated so as to allow the pollen to ooze out under pressure of the insect's body. This is an obvious advance in structure, because it saves and utilizes the whole of the pollen, whereas in the case of gorse a considerable portion of that valuable material is wastefully shed abroad to the four winds of heaven. In the single family of the pea flowers alone, whose blossoms are all constructed on very much the same architectural model, I could tell you of a dozen such minor modifications, each intended in its way to secure more perfect and certain fertilization. Plants are always inventing fresh Yankee notions. But why does the greater gorse choose the winter to flower in? Why indulge in so unusual and eccentric an idiosyncrasy? Simply because it finds there is then and there an opening for it. And wherever an opening in life exists, some enterprising person or some enterprising species is sure to step in and avail himself of the vacancy. Bees come out foraging on every sunny day through our English winter. Therefore it is worth while for a few stray flowers to straggle on through the coldest months in order to utilize this off-chance of impregnation. Whenever a morning occurs in winter fit for bees to venture out on, a few hardy gorse-blossoms venture out to accommodate them. And in early spring, before there is much competition among other plants for the services of those common carriers of pollen, the gorse-bushes are afire with golden blossoms, whose bright petals and heavy scent, hanging thick upon the air, are all intended as so many bids for the kindly attention of the insect fertil izers. Yet the flower, after all, is only the first stage in the production of the fruit and seed. It exists for no other purpose than to give rise to the germs of future generations. As soon as the blossom is fertilized, the ovary begins to swell out into tiny oblong pods, rather short and thick, but very bean-like in structure. A pod of some sort, indeed, enclosing one or more seeds, like peas or beans, is the universal form of fruit throughout the family of the pea-flowers. In gorse, the seeds number some three or four, and look like miniature kidneybeans. But inasmuch as, like all others of their tribe, they are rich in food stuffs, the gorse-bush protects them against the attacks of insects by making its pod very thick and hairy. Against browsing animals, they are sufficiently protected by the spinelike branches. When the pods ripen, they have a curious and interesting method of dispersing the seeds. If you walk across a common on a sunny summer day, you may hear every now and then little explosive bangs resounding on every side of you as if from invisible pop-guns. These are the reports of the bursting gorsepods. The valves are elastic, and the heat of the sun makes them roll up at last with a sudden burst, and scatter the seeds on every side around them. As most of the bushes flower in April, the pods are generally ripe in July or August. This mode of dispersion is not unlike the familiar method employed by the garden balsam. It is a dodge which both plants have hit upon independently. NEW SERIES.-VOL. LIX., No. 4 36 36 The dwarf furze resembles in most points its bigger and burlier cousin. Only, it takes up the running when the greater gorse leaves off; it flowers while the other is in fruit, and ripens its pods while the other is flowering. Moreover, it is even more strictly western in type than the greater gorse; it does not cross the Rhine, which forms its scientific frontier, and it goes further north into Scotland than its bigger and less protected companion. Growing lower on the ground, it feels frost less severely. In the matter of fertilization, it shows no originality, but follows the lead of its big relation. Being a summer plant, however, it does not need to angle for the visits of bees like its wintry friend, but takes its chance with the Scotch heather and purple ling in whose company it covers square miles of moorland. There are only these two species of gorse in England. If any man tells you otherwise, assure him that he is a splitter. For modern biologists are divided into the two camps of the splitters and the lumpers. The first are in favor of making a species out of every petty local race or variety; the second are all for lumping unimportant minor forms into a single species. As you may gather from these remarks, I am myself a convinced and consistent lumper. I entertain conscientious objections to splitting. The late Mr. Borrer, who was the most abandoned splitter I have ever met with, endeavored to make seventeen species out of our English dog-rose, and no less than forty out of our common blackberry-bush. Now a dog-rose, I maintain, is only a dog-rose; and the late Mr. Borrer may argue the matter till he is black in the face before he makes me believe that a common blackberry-bramble is forty distinct and separate brambles. I make these remarks "without prejudice," because certain splitters divide the greater gorse into two indistinguishable species, which they describe respectively as common and Irish furze; while they break up the dwarf form into two equally indistinguishable kinds, which they describe under the names of dwarf and Welsh furze respectively. To me, these distinctions appear pretty much as if we were to divide the human race in Britain into two distinct species of blue-eyed and black-eyed. To an eye which is neither black nor blue, but judiciously gray, the two supposed species seem to run into one another everywhere by imperceptible gradations. On the other hand, I would desire to warn the innocent reader against the opposite error committed by Bentham, who considers that the dwarf furze may be "perhaps a mere variety" of the greater gorse. This view, in my opinion, errs too much in the contrary direction of excessive lumping. I have therefore, of course, a low opinion of it. But I mention the fact merely in order to point out its exact accordance with a general principle of human nature. You will doubtless have observed that it is precisely this just mean which separates Us-not you and me in particular, but the universal and absolute subjective Us-from the inferior class known as Other People. Other People, you must have observed, rush into such wild excesses; We alone preserve a level head of moderation in all departments of human thought or action. Other People are either more conservative than We are, in which case they are regular unprogressive old Tories; or else they are more radical than We are, in which case they are downright socialists, revolutionists, and visionary Utopians. We alone occupy down to a shade of shades the precisely right medium position. No matter how far we go in either direction, the people who go further than We, or fall short of Us, are equally in error. They are silly superstitious bigots on the one hand, and wicked materialists or agnostics on the other. They are 80 very high church, or so very low church, or so very broad church, while we ourselves are just right, don't you know," not yielding in any way to foolish fads and fancies. Therefore the true faith is obviously this-to be neither a ridiculous splitter nor an absurd lumper, but to acknowledge the plain fact that there are two kinds of gorse, neither more nor less, in these Isles of Britain. For which true faith, without a shadow of dogmatism I will go, if need be, to the stake at Smithfield. - Cornhill Magazine. 66 A RUN FOR THE ATLANTIC RECORD. BY JAMES MILNE. GOOD, and very good it may be, to hug salt-water in wooden walls, under mast and sail, winds filled with charming uncertainties, like sweethearting. But really, being sailoring, what can compare to the throb of splendid life there is in a crack Atlantic liner scouring the sea! Ours, too, was the prettiest run imaginable from New York, that strident sentinel of a kinsfolk's shore, across the September waves to Southampton, most kindly of the great English seaports. Saving a two days' much-tossed ocean, we should certainly have broken the record, Sandy Hook to the Needles. As things went, we came within a few minutes of doing it; only that is getting ahead of the story, and the howit-is-done and the what-life-is on board an Atlantic greyhound. A blackish drizzle was over New York and the Hudson River, and the North River, and Hoboken, the other side of the North River, where the Normannia lay leashed to the Hamburg-American Packet Company's pier, until the hour should arrive for starting. A monster she looked, against the background of quays and warehouses, her big funnels smoking sedately into the heavens. Yet, get the Normannia out on the waters and how her immense size would disappear in a series of graceful lines and what a beautiful picture of buoyant symmetry she would present. Between ship and pier, along three or four wide gangways, there was an incessant movement of passengers bidding good-bye to friends, of friends taking farewell of passengers, of porters trundling the baggage and the mails on board. About the departure of a liner, no matter from what corner of the globe, no matter where bound, there is always something at once sad and elating. |