THE SMALL NETTLE— continued. 
the skin ; and the pressure of the epidermal cells surrounding the bulb-like reservoir 
forces the venom into the wound. Circulating protoplasmic matter can be readily 
observed with the microscope in these transparent and colourless stings, and it is 
suggested that the inflammatory character of the sting inflicted is due not merely to 
the strong acid but to an albuminoid toxin which is present. As Aaron Hill, an 
eighteenth-century versifier, put it — 
“Tender-handed, stroke the nettle, 
And it stings you for your pains ; 
Grasp it like a man of mettle. 
And it soft as silk remains.’* 
The leaves are opposite and have each two free stipules ; whilst there is 
considerable variety in the essential organs of the flowers, some being in most cases 
perfect, though our largest British species is misleadingly named U. dioica. The 
perianth consists of four sepals, which are equal in the staminate flowers, but appear 
more obviously to be two pairs in the carpellate ones. The curved filaments seem 
peculiarly sensitive to the warmth of the morning sun. As they spring upwards and 
outwards, the anther turns inside out, so that puffs of the fine-grained pollen may 
be seen floating away on the breeze. 
Nettle-tops, boiled in milk, make a broth or porridge still in repute in many 
parts of the country as a blood-purifier, and we have the testimony of Pepys’s 
Diary, and of the constant use of it by Bewick the engraver, as to its excellence. 
The tough fibre of the group is utilised in many countries, though the 
valuable Rhea or Grass-cloth is the product of one of the stingless Tribes of the 
Family. The poet Campbell writes : — 
“ I have slept in Nettle sheets, and dined off a Nettle table-cloth, and I have heard my mother say that she thought 
Nettle cloth more durable than any other linen.” 
In the Museum at Kew may be seen lace made from Nettle fibre in Ireland 
during the Famine. 
Of our three English species of Stinging Nettle, the largest, U. dioica L., is 
perennial ; U. pilulifera L., the Roman Nettle, an annual species with its female 
flowers in little pill-like globular heads, is the most virulent ; whilst U. urens L., a 
more common annual form, is distinguished by the prominent longitudinal veins in 
its ovate-oblong, coarsely-serrate, bright green leaves and by its monoecious clusters 
of flowers. 
All the species agree in their preference for the fine tilth and manured soil in 
the neighbourhood of human habitations, and their consequent close association with 
man has led to unfounded doubts as to their indigenous character. 
The Red Admiral, Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell, Comma and Painted Lady 
Butterflies are among the many insects whose caterpillars feed on the Nettles, 
though they are most commonly found on U. dioica. 
