SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
141 
tion be omitted. The writer knows from experience 
that it has been used, and succeeded; on the other 
hand, it has almost as often failed. 
The stick, about 9 inches long, is simply forked, 
and held in the palm of the hand ; it is supposed to 
become agitated when there is water beneath. In a 
note on “ The Divining Rod/’ as used by Mr. John 
Mullins, of Chippenham, in search for water at 
Grantham, in 1891 ( Antiquary , vol. xxiii., p. 190), 
we get the following : 
“ On Exmoor, faith in the occult powers of a 
V-shaped twig of hazel used to be quite common up 
to a recent date. An old woman who was in the 
habit of ‘ hurting ’—that is, of picking bilberries— 
carried with her a twig, that she might insure light¬ 
ing on the earliest and ripest. When we used to 
follow the Devon and Somerset staghounds thirty 
years ago, the boldest and best rider always carried 
a small forked twig of hazel in his breeches pocket, 
as a sure preventative against galling. The late Sir 
Thomas Acland’s head gamekeeper was similarly 
equipped for luck in black-game shooting.” 
The hazel ( Coryllus avellana , L.) is found through¬ 
out Europe, North Africa, Siberia, and Dahuria. The 
nuts yield oil; the wood is elastic. The fertilized 
female flowers produce nut-bearing peduncles after 
fertilization. 
A far more showy plant, and one that flowers so 
long as to give rise to the motto, “ When the gorse 
is out of flower, kissing is out of favour,” is the 
furze, whin, or gorse ( Ulex Europceus, L.). The first 
of its three names is difficult to account for. Prior 
gives it as “ fir,” from its use as firing ; others suggest 
that it is from the likeness of its spines to those of a 
fir-tree. Gorse is also an obscure word, perhaps 
from the Welsh goresla , waste, or Middle Latin 
gorra; while “ whins” is from the Danish hviin, the 
