If plants have ambition, there is one vice closely allied to it which they do not possess. Jealousy is confined to animals. Men, dogs, cats and horses are jealous. There is no evidence to lead us to suppose that plants are afflicted with that horror of horrors. They may have their loves and their hatreds; they will, as we have seen, help one another, and they will strangle and murder one another. They will even rob one another; but the torture of jealousy seems to be unknown to them. They will attack their neighbours with the pitiless savagery of the old Rhineland robber knights. No vampire could with more ruthless cruelty suck the blood of a fair maiden than certain malignant fungi, which fasten upon great trees and shrubs, and draw out the sap of their noble lives in order to nourish their own ignominious bodies. Then there are the saprophytes, plants as unlovely as their name, vegetable horrors, which, like the ghouls of the “Arabian Nights,” are found feasting upon death and decay. _Non ragionam di lor! Ma guarda e passa._ In the part of the world where I live the old thorn trees are, with the oaks, the glory of the countryside. One year, to my dismay, I saw that all my thorns in which I took so much pride were apparently dying. In the middle of summer their leaves withered and wilted, and they presented a piteous sight. I wrote to Kew for advice. Kew is a never-failing help in trouble. The answer came back: Have you any savin juniper bushes? If so, examine them. You will probably find them covered with a yellow slimy sort of jelly, which is the first stage of a fungus which, in its second stage, fastens upon the thorn. The letter went on to advise a merciless destruction and holocaust of the savin bushes, and prophesied that the fungus on the thorns would die and not renew itself, so that no permanent harm would ensue. Sure enough, in my ignorance, I had planted a number of bushes of savin, which I found, as Kew prophesied, to be covered with an ugly yellow mucilaginous substance. My inquisition was followed by an _auto da fé_ of the junipers; when their enemies were burnt, the thorns recovered and I had no more trouble. How most other plants hate the beech and the ash! How resolutely they refuse to grow under their shade! And yet even the best hated men have their friends, who will smile to them and seek their company. Lords of beech woods wanting covert for their game should try planting Laurus Colchica and Laurus rotundifolia. The pheasants love their shelter, and they are quite happy even under old-established beeches.