Animals and grass--Travellers in the elephant grass--Enemies in Britain--Cactus _versus_ rats and wild asses--Angora kids _v._ acacia--The Wait-a-bit thorn--Palm roots and snails--Wild yam _v._ pig--Larch _v._ goat--Portuguese and English gorse--Hawthorn _v._ rabbits--Briers, brambles, and barberry--The bramble loop and sick children or ailing cows--Briers of the wilderness--Theophrastus and Phrygian goats--Carline near the Pyramids--Calthrops--Tragacanth--Hollies and their ingenious contrivances--How thorns and spines are formed--Tastes of animals 177 CHAPTER XV ON NETTLES, SENSITIVE PLANTS, ETC. Stinging nettles at home and abroad--The use of the nettle--Sham nettles--Sensitive plants--Mechanism--Plants alive, under chloroform and ether--Telegraph plant--Woodsorrel--Have plants nerves?--Electricity in the Polar regions--Plants under electric shocks--Currents of electricity in plants--The singing of trees to the electro-magnetic ear--Experiments--Electrocution of vegetables 191 CHAPTER XVI ON FLOWERS OF THE WATER The first plant--Seaweeds in hot baths--Breaking of the meres--Gory Dew--Plants driven back to the water--Marsh plants--Fleur-de-Lis--Reeds and rushes--Floating islands--Water-lilies--_Victoria regia_--Plants 180 feet deep--Life in a pond, as seen by an inhabitant--Fish-farming--The useful Diatom--Willows and Alders--Polluted streams--The Hornwort--The Florida Hyacinth--Reeds and grass-reeds--The richest lands in the world--Papyrus of Egypt--Birds and hippopotami--Fever and ague 200 CHAPTER XVII ON GRASSLANDS Where is peace?--Troubles of the grass--Roadsides--Glaciers in Switzerland--Strength and gracefulness of grasses--Rainstorms--Dangers of Drought and of swamping--Artificial fields--Farmer's abstruse calculations--Grass mixtures--Tennis lawns--The invasion of forest--Natural grass--Prairie of the United States, Red Indian, Cowboy--Pampas and Gaucho--Thistles and tall stories--South Africa and Boers--Hunting of the Tartars--An unfortunate Chinese princess--Australian shepherds herds 213 CHAPTER XVIII POISONS Poisoned arrows--Fish poisons--Manchineel--Curare--A wonderful story--Antiaris--Ordeals--The Obi poison--Oracles produced by poisons--Plants which make horses crazy and others that remove their hair--Australian sheep and the Caustic Creeper--Swelled head--Madness by the Darling Pea--Wild and tame animals, how they know poisons--How do they tell one another?--The Yew tree, when is it, and when is it not poisonous? 226 CHAPTER XIX ON FRUITS