A VERY INTELLIGENT PLANT 279 



through the important process of fructification. 

 The calyx and the petals help to keep things warm 

 for them, and so they persist till the pods are 

 ready to open and discharge their beans. 



Each pod contains as a rule four beans, and 

 these are fat and well stored with nutriment for 

 the baby seedling. The young plant subsists for 

 its first few days on the nourishment thus laid by 

 for it ; for gorse is not one of those improvident 

 plants which turn their young ones loose upon 

 a cold and unsympathetic world without a coin 

 in their pockets, so to speak, to fall back upon. 

 Plants in this respect differ, like human beings. 

 Some send their offspring out, mere street arabs 

 of the vegetable world, without any capital to live 

 upon ; others provide them with a good stock or 

 reserve of foodstuff which suffices them till they 

 are of an age to earn their own living. You can 

 judge by the fatness and distention of the pod in 

 No. 1 1 that the young beans of the gorse are 

 fairly provided for in this respect. Indeed, so 

 rich are they in food, that they would suffer seri- 

 ously from two sets of enemies, were they not 

 protected against both exactly as the buds are. 

 The stout prickles at the ends of the branches 

 efficiently repel the assaults of browsing animals ; 

 the close hairs on the pods (not seen in the sketch) 

 just as efficiently repel the insects which would 

 fain lay their eggs in the beans, as one knows 

 they do in the similar case of the edible peas in 

 our garden. 



Nothing is more beautiful about the gorse, 



