of tea—The hermit and his intelligent goat—Government coffee and cafés—Chicory—Chocolate—Aztecs—Kola and its curious effects—Tobacco—Sir Walter Raleigh—Great emperors and tobacco—Could we grow tobacco?—Story of a Sumatra cigar—Danger of young people smoking tobacco

120   CHAPTER X
ON DESERTS What are deserts like?—Camel-riding—Afterglow—Darwin in South America—Big Bad Lands—Plants which train themselves to endure thirst—Cactus and euphorbia—Curious shapes—Grey hairs—Iceplant—Esparto grass—Retama—Colocynth—Sudden flowering of the Karoo—Short-lived flowers—Colorado Desert—Date palms on the Nile—Irrigation in Egypt—The creaking Sakkieh—Alexandria hills—The Nile and Euphrates 131   CHAPTER XI
THE STORY OF THE FIELDS What was Ancient Britain?—Marshes and bittern—Oak forest—Pines—Savage country—Cornfield—Fire—Ice—Forest—Worms—Paleolithic family—The first farmers—Alfred the Great's first Government agricultural leaflet—Dr. Johnson—Prince Charlie's time—Misery of our forefathers—Oatmeal, milk, and cabbages—Patrick Miller—Tennyson's Northern Farmer—Flourishing days of 1830 to 1870—Derelict farmhouses and abandoned crofts—Where have the people gone?—Will they come back? 143   CHAPTER XII
ON PLANTS WHICH ADD TO CONTINENTS Lake Aral and Lake Tschad—Mangrove swamps of West Africa—New mudbanks colonized—Fish, oysters, birds, and mosquitoes—Grasping roots and seedlings—Extent of mangroves—Touradons of the Rhone—Sea-meadows of Britain—Floating pollen—Reeds and sedges of estuarine meadows—Storms—Plants on ships' hulls—Kelps and tangles in storms—Are seaweeds useless?—Fish 156   CHAPTER XIII
ROCKS, STONES, AND SCENERY An old wall—Beautiful colours—Insects—Nature's chief aim—Hard times of lichens—Age of lichens—Crusts—Mosses—Lava flows of great eruptions—Colonizing plants—Krakatoa—Vesuvius—Greenland volcanoes—Sumatra—Shale-heaps—Foreigners on railway lines—Plants keep to their own grounds—Precipices and rocks—Plants which change the scenery—Cañons in America 166   CHAPTER XIV
ON VEGETABLE DEMONS Animals and grass—Travellers in the elephant grass—Enemies in Britain—Cactus versus rats and wild asses—Angora kids v. acacia—The Wait-a-bit thorn—Palm roots and snails—Wild yam v. pig—Larch v. goat—Portuguese and English gorse—Hawthorn v. rabbits—Briers, brambles, and barberry—The bramble loop and sick children or ailing cows—Briers of the wilderness—Theophrastus and Phrygian goats—Carline near the Pyramids—Calthrops—Tragacanth—Hollies and their ingenious contrivances—How thorns and spines are formed—Tastes of animals 177   CHAPTER XV
ON NETTLES, SENSITIVE PLANTS, ETC. Stinging nettles at home and abroad—The use of the nettle—Sham nettles—Sensitive plants—Mechanism—Plants alive, under chloroform and ether—Telegraph plant—Woodsorrel—Have plants nerves?—Electricity in the Polar regions—Plants under electric shocks—Currents of electricity in plants—The singing of trees to the electro-magnetic ear—Experiments—Electrocution of vegetables 191   CHAPTER XVI
ON FLOWERS OF THE WATER The first plant—Seaweeds in hot baths—Breaking of the meres—Gory Dew—Plants driven back to the water—Marsh plants—Fleur-de-Lis—Reeds and rushes—Floating islands—Water-lilies—Victoria regia—Plants 180 feet deep—Life in a pond, as seen by an inhabitant—Fish-farming—The useful Diatom—Willows and Alders—Polluted streams—The Hornwort—The Florida Hyacinth—Reeds and grass-reeds—The richest lands in the world—Papyrus of Egypt—Birds and hippopotami—Fever and ague 200   CHAPTER XVII
ON GRASSLANDS Where is peace?—Troubles of the grass—Roadsides—Glaciers in Switzerland—Strength and gracefulness of grasses—Rainstorms—Dangers of Drought and of swamping—Artificial fields—Farmer's abstruse calculations—Grass mixtures—Tennis lawns—The invasion of forest—Natural grass—Prairie of the United States, Red Indian, Cowboy—Pampas and Gaucho—Thistles and tall stories—South Africa and Boers—Hunting of the Tartars—An unfortunate Chinese princess—Australian shepherds herds 213   CHAPTER XVIII
POISONS Poisoned arrows—Fish poisons—Manchineel—Curare—A wonderful story—Antiaris—Ordeals—The Obi poison—Oracles produced by poisons—Plants which make horses crazy and others that remove their hair—Australian sheep and the Caustic Creeper—Swelled head—Madness by the Darling Pea—Wild and tame animals, how they know poisons—How do they tell one another?—The Yew tree, when is it, and when is it not poisonous? 226   CHAPTER XIX
ON FRUITS Bright colours of fruits—Unripe fruits and their effects—An