CXXXV.— THE COMMON CORSE. 
Vlex europceus Linne. 
W HEN, in “ The Tempest,” Ariel reports to Prospero that Caliban, Trinculo, 
and Stephano have followed his music 
through 
Tooth’d briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns,” 
the Rev. H. N. Ellacombe (from whose “ Plant-lore of Shakespeare ” I have gained 
great assistance) suggests that by “ pricking goss ” and “ sharp furzes ” different 
plants were, perhaps, intended. The “ pricking goss ” was, he suggests, Genista 
anglica Linn6, while the “sharp furzes” were Ulex europceus Linn6. 
However this may be, we have in the plant which we now name indiscriminately 
Gorse or Furze a plant of much beauty and of great physiological interest. Whilst in 
Genista only one of our three British species is spinous, or in any marked degree 
xerophytic, Ulex is a genus of some twenty species, all of which are densely spinous. 
There are few better illustrations either of what is known as the Law of Recapitulation 
or of the direct influence of physical conditions upon structure than those afforded 
by the development of seedlings of the Common Gorse. The exalbuminous seeds 
in sprouting spread out their two oval green cotyledons and then produce several 
little trefoil leaves. Under ordinary circumstances these are soon succeeded on the 
main axis or stem of the seedling by narrower, more pointed, and stiffer leaves, and 
these by spines which no longer bear any semblance of leaf-nature. The adult plant 
is leafless, the functions of leaves being carried on by straight, green, fluted, polygonal, 
much-branched, spinous branches, and transpiration (performed by stomata sunk in 
the grooves) being reduced to a minimum. This markedly xerophytic character, 
however, would seem to have been acquired as the result of dry air ; for if seedlings 
are grown under a bell-glass, or in air which is otherwise kept in a state of saturation, 
the production of trefoil leaves is prolonged, and that of spines is postponed. These 
facts naturally suggest the descent of our spinous Gorse from a more leafy ancestry, 
the development of the individual at the present day, or, as it is termed, its ontogeny, 
recapitulating the history of the ancestry of the race, or phytogeny. Darwin, in his 
“ Origin of Species,” points out that characters are often inherited at slightly earlier 
ages in successive generations ; and this principle, which we have termed that of 
“ anticipatory inheritance,” suggests how the effects of drought upon the Gorse 
made their appearance at successively earlier stages until they now appear in the 
earliest seedling development. 
That the spines, both primary and secondary, are branches is indicated by their 
bearing flowers. These are flanked by two ovate bracts. The calyx is yellow, but 
paler than the petals, shaggy with spreading black hairs, and so minutely toothed (its 
upper lobe into two, and the lower one into three, teeth) that it is often difficult to 
see anything but the main division into two. The deep golden-yellow petals exhale 
