From her fifth year onwards Florence Nightingale had, then, for her homes Lea Hurst in the summer months and Embley during the rest of the year. The family usually spent a portion of the season in London. The sisters led, it will thus be seen, a life mainly in the country, and Florence as a child became fond of flowers, birds, and beasts. A neatly printed manuscript-book is preserved, in which she made a catalogue of her collection of flowers, describing each with analytical accuracy, and noting the particular spot at which it was picked. Her childish letters contain many references to animal companions. She made particular friends with the nuthatch. She had a pet pig, a pet donkey, a pet pony. She was fond of riding, and fond of dogs. "A small pet animal," she said many years afterwards, "is often an excellent companion for the sick, for long chronic cases especially." "The more I see of men," wrote a cynic, "the more I love dogs." Florence Nightingale, in the same piece from which I have just quoted, drew a like moral from her experience of some nurses. "An invalid," she said, "in giving an account of his nursing by a nurse and a dog, infinitely preferred that of the dog. 'Above all,' he said, 'it did not talk.'"[7] There were no babies in the Nightingale family after the arrival of Florence herself, but most of her mother's many brothers and sisters married and had families; and as Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale's houses were often visited by these relations, there was seldom wanting a succession of babies, and in them and their christenings, and teethings, and illnesses, and lessons, Florence took that interest which is often strong in little girls. [7] _Notes on Nursing_, ed. 1860, p. 147 _n._ Sometimes a baby died, and her letters show that Florence was as much interested in a death as in a birth. She rejoiced in "the little angels in heaven." One of her favourite poems at this period was _The Better Land_ of Mrs. Hemans, which she copied out for a cousin as "so very beautiful." The earliest letter which I have seen, written when she was ten, strikes mingled notes. She is staying with Uncle Octavius Smith at "Thames Bank" (a house which then adjoined his distillery at Millbank), and writes to her sister, who is on a visit with the maid to another set of cousins:--