Effects of opium--The poppy-plant and its latex--Work of the opium-gatherer--Where the opium poppy is grown--Haschisch of the Count of Monte Cristo--Heckling, scotching, and retting--Hempseed and bhang--Users of haschisch--Use of india-rubber--Why plants produce rubber--With the Indians in Nicaragua--The Congo Free State--Scarcity of rubber--Columbus and Torquemada--Macintosh--Gutta-percha 301 CHAPTER XXV ON CLIMBING PLANTS Robin-run-the-Hedge--Bramble bushes--Climbing roses--Spiny, wiry stems of smilax--The weak young stem of a liane--The way in which stems revolve--The hop and its little harpoons--A climbing palm--Rapidity of turners--The effect of American life on them--Living bridges--Rope bridges in India--The common stitchwort--Tendrils--Their behaviour when stroked or tickled--Their sensibility--Their grasping power--The quickness with which they curve and their sense of weight--Charles Darwin--Reasonableness of plants--Corkscrew spirals--The pads of the Virginian Creeper--The ivy--Does it do harm?--Embracing roots--Tree ivy 313 CHAPTER XXVI PLANTS WHICH PREY ON PLANTS The kinds of cannibals--Bacteria--Spring flowers--Pale, ghostly Wood-flowers--Their alliance with fungi--Gooseberries growing on trees--Orchid-hunting--The life of an orchid--The mistletoe--Balder the Beautiful--Druids-Mistletoe as a remedy--Its parasitic roots--The trees it prefers--The _Cactus Loranthus_--Yellow Rattle and Eyebright, or Milk-thief, and their root-suckers--Broomrape and toothwort--Their colour and tastes--The scales of the toothwort which catch animalcula--Sir Stamford Raffles--A flower a yard across--The Dodder--Its twining stem and sucker-roots--Parasites rare, degenerate and dangerously situated 327 CHAPTER XXVII PLANTS ATTACKING ANIMALS Brittle Star _v._ algæ--Fungus _v._ meal-worm--Stag-headed caterpillars--Liverwort _v._ small insects--Natural flower-pots--Watercups of Bromeliads--Sarracenia and inquiring insects--An unfortunate centipede--Pitcher plants: their crafty contrivances--Blowflies defy them and spiders rob them--Bladderwort's traps which catch small fry--Hairs and their uses--Plants used as fly-papers--Butterwort _v._ midges--Its use as rennet--Sundew and its sensitive tentacles--Pinning down an insect--Suffocating and chloroforming the sundew--Venus' fly-trap which acts like a rat-trap--Have plants a nervous system? 340 CHAPTER XXVIII MOSSES AND MOORS