2 HISTORY OF BRITISH ZOOPHYTES. 
might be said to live, they were not sentient beings,—they 
did not feel. A true lover of nature, however, treats them 
with kindliness, as if they enjoyed life. We have known 
amiable enthusiasts, who, without holding it as a fixed prin- 
ciple, acted as if the plants they admired and loved really 
had sentient life. The late Mr. James Smith, of Monk- 
woodgrove in Ayrshire, was a person of this description. 
They tell that when he was constrained to cut down a tree 
that was overshadowing other plants in his garden, he blind- 
folded himself that he might not see the wounds which the 
axe inflicted. When he was showing the beauties of his 
greenhouse one day to two ladies, friends of mine, one of 
them said to him, “ Mr. Smith, what is that in the flower- 
pot? it is very like a nettle’ His answer was, “ Indeed, 
ma’am, it is just a nettle, but it grew up sae bonnily, puir 
thing, that I could not think to pu’ it.’ Though we may 
not go the length of sparing the nettle in our mercy, who 
would wantonly injure a flower? Were we to see a young 
lady tearing the petals of a lovely rose, she would immedi- 
ately appear less loveable in our eyes, for it would prove that 
she was dead to the charms of one of the most beautiful 
works of God. She has torn and cast to the ground what 
the fairest fingers and the greatest human skill could never 
