WHIN AND BROOM 



59 



repeated, it concentrates its forces, and redoubles 

 its means of defence. 



The tender foliage of its days of innocence would 

 prove the most acceptable of bites. Unless some 

 device were hit upon to stay the spoiler, speedy 

 extinction was inevitable. Suppose some of the 

 plants, by reason of the hardness of the leaf, to 

 become less agreeable ; suppose the hardness to 

 increase until it pricked the creature's mouth. 

 Here we have some sort of explanation of a soft- 

 leaved plant becoming so formidable. 



It may be asked why the broom did not change 

 in the same way. Several answers may be sug- 

 gested. I imagine that there is a bitterness about 

 the broom, which makes it less sought after by 

 animals than the sweeter-juiced whin. 



I have seen cows pulling at every shrub round 

 about, except the broom, even when the branches 

 were so intermingled that it was a matter of some 

 difficulty to disentangle them -just as I have seen 

 them, with a delicacy one could scarcely have 

 looked for in such large-mouthed creatures, picking 

 the surrounding grass without disturbing the tall, 

 upright meadow buttercup. Do not these same 

 buttercups owe their name to the supposed 

 partiality of the cow, which never tastes them if 



