A VERY INTELLIGENT PLANT 261 



no plant ever wastes one drop more of nectar 

 on its flowers, or one atom more of sweet pulp 

 on its fruit, than is absolutely necessary to secure 

 its own purely selfish object. It offers the bird 

 or the insect the minimum wage for which bird 

 or insect will consent to do the work it contracts 

 for ; and it never wastes one farthing's worth of 

 useful material on tips or generosities. The rose, 

 for all that poets have said of it, is strictly utili- 

 tarian. " You help me and I will help you," it 

 says to the butterfly ; and it keeps the sternest 

 possible debtor-and-creditor account with all its 

 benefactors. 



As a familiar example of this purposive character 

 in all plant life, I am going, in the present chapter, 

 to take one of the most utilitarian shrubs the 

 common gorse and try to show you why it 

 behaves as it does in the conduct of its affairs ; 

 who help it in life and who hinder it, what friends 

 it strives to buy or conciliate, what enemies it 

 repels by what violent acts of armed hostility. 



Everybody knows gorse ; and everybody also 

 knows that it is almost never out of flower. This 

 last peculiarity, however, is due to a cause that 

 not everybody has noticed. We have two distinct 

 kinds of gorse at least the larger and the smaller. 

 It is the larger sort that one observes most when 

 it is not in blossom, though it is the smaller 

 kind whose golden bloom contrasts so beautifully 

 in autumn with the rich purple of the upland 

 heather. Now, the larger gorse begins to flower 

 in October or November ; it goes on opening its 



