ON PLANTS IN RELATION TO ANIMALS. 891 
It is also in vogue in the furze districts for walls of sheds 
and outbuildings. 
It has been much recommended for cultivation, especially 
on soils almost too poor to grow anything else. In the 
Cyclopcedia of Agriculture we find it thus noticed : 
“When regularly cut down every year the annual shoots, 
mown as wanted, and bruised to deaden the prickles, supply 
a green food throughout the winter, which all animals, and 
especially horses, are particularly fond of. When cultivated 
the seeds are either collected from the wild plants or from 
a variety which, by successive cultivation, has become rather 
more succulent and productive.” 
Our own observations, on both the wild and cultivated 
furze as food for cattle, lead to the conclusion that its 
feeding properties are too low to render its gathering and 
preparation at all a remunerative matter ; still less does its 
value at all warrant the purchase of crushing machinery, 
which has been invented for bruising the prickly plant. 
At one time some extensive plantations of gorse were 
made in the Cotteswolds, and very costly machinery employed 
for utilising it, but we believe it was soon abandoned; still, 
we are in favour of a gorse brake in some situations, especially 
where not too thick, as it not only affords shelter for sheep, 
but, as they browse upon it greedily, it often aids the small 
and wild grasses. 
2. Genista , like the furze, is partial to poor soils, but while 
the former get on on poor clays the latter is fonder of a less 
stiff soil. Our species are three, as follows : 
Genista tinctoria.-— Stems shrubby, erect; leaves smooth, 
sometimes pubescent. 
,, pilosa .—Stems shrubby, procumbent; leaves 
silky. 
„ anglica —-Stems wiry and spinous. 
Of these the first species is the most common, and is, 
besides, the one in which we are mostly interested. It 
usually occurs on poor, wet clays, such as the marls of the 
Lias and the Fullers’ earth, and is the most useful of the 
species, the other two being merely occasional forms. 
The dyers’ green weed is so called from its use in the art 
of dyeing, for which it was extensively used. Once it was 
employed as a medicine, and was esteemed as a diuretic, but 
at present the next genus takes its place. It is largely 
collected in some parts of the country for use as a dye. 
It is called dyers’ green weed, wood, or woad waxen. 
Mrs. Lankester says of it that— 
