114 VIGNETTES FROM NATURE. 



are apt to imagine ; indeed, the nettle- 

 philosophy at present current with the larger 

 part of the world seems to me lamentably 

 one-sided. As a rule, the sting is the only 

 point in the whole organisation of the family 

 over which we ever waste a single thought. 

 That is our ordinary human narrowness : in 

 each plant or animal we interest ourselves 

 about that one part alone which has special 

 reference to our own relations with it, for 

 good or for evil. In a strawberry, we think 

 only of the fruit ; in a hawthorn, of the 

 flowers ; in a deadly nightshade, of the 

 poisonous berry ; and in a ^nettle, of the 

 sting. Now I frankly admit at the pre- 

 sent moment that the nettle-sting has an 

 obtrusive and unnecessarily pungent way of 

 forcing itself upon the human attention ; but 

 it does not sum up the whole life-history of 

 the plant in its own one peculiarity for all 

 that. The nettle exists for its own sake, we 

 may be sure, and not merely for the sake of 

 occasionally inflicting a passing smart upon 

 the meddlesome human fingers. 



