A BED OF NETTLES. 119 



nettle has found its chance in life, its one 

 fitting vacancy, among the ditches and waste- 

 places by roadsides or near cottages ; and it 

 has laid itself out for the circumstances in 

 which it lives. Its near relative, the hop, is 

 a twisting climber ; its southern cousins, the 

 fig and the mulberry, are tall and spreading 

 trees. But the nettle has made itself a niche 

 in nature along the bare patches which 

 diversify human cultivation ; and it has 

 adapted its stem and leaves to the station in 

 life where it has pleased Providence to place 

 it. Plants like the dock, the burdock, and the 

 rhubarb, which lift their leaves straight 

 above the ground, from large subterranean 

 reservoirs of material, have usually big, 

 broad, undivided leaves, that overshadow all 

 beneath them, and push boldly out on every 

 side to drink in the air and the sunlight. On 

 the other hand, regular hedgerow plants, like 

 cleavers, chervil, herb-Robert, milfoil, and 

 most ferns, which grow in the tangled shady 

 undermath of the banks and thickets, have 



