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254 NETTEMENT IOETTEMENT, Alfred Francois, a French author, born in Paris, July 22, 1805, died there, Nov. 15, 1869. He founded at Paris in 1848 P Opi- nion publiq ue newspaper, which was suppressed after the coup d'etat of Dec. 2, 1851, when he was arrested with other opposition members of the legislative assembly. He published a great number of historical, biographical, and miscellaneous works, including Memoires sur la duchesse de Berri (3 vols., 1837) ; Essai sur le progres du Catholicisms en Angleterre, with a translation of Cardinal Wiseman's lectures (2 vols., 1839); Histoiredela litter aturefrancaise sous la royaute de juillet (2 vols., 1854) ; His- toire de la conquete d*Alger (1856), which ob- tained in 1869 the second Gobert prize ; and Histoire de la restauration (8 vols., 1860-72). His brother FRANCIS (born in 1808) has pub- lished Nouvelle Histoire de la revolution de 1789 (2 vols., 1862), and other writings. NETTLE (Ang. Sax. and Dutch, netel), the name of plants of the genus urtica, distinguish- ed for the stinging quality of their minute hairs. Prior shows that the word in different languages originally meant "that with which one sews," the Germanic and Scandinavian nations having in former times used the nettle fibre as thread, as was done by the Scotch in the 17th century. The genus urtica (the clas- sical Latin name, from urere, to burn) gives its name to the family urticacem, as to the limits of which there is a great difference of opinion ; while some botanists make the urticacece a very comprehensive order, including as subfamilies the elms (ulmacece), the breadfruits, mulberries, and figs (artocarpece and morece), the nettles and allied genera (urticece), and the hop and hemp (cannabinecR), others regard these as en- titled to rank as families, and restrict the urti- cacecs to some 40 genera allied to the nettles. The genus urtica consists mostly of herbaceous plants (a few are trees), all supplied with sting- ing hairs ; they have a bland, watery juice, and a tough, fibrous bark ; the leaves are opposite, and the flowers are monoecious or dioecious. Belonging to the apetalous division of exoge- nous plants, the structure of. the flowers is ex- ceedingly simple ; the staminate flower consists of four sepals and stamens, in the centre of which is the cup-shaped rudiment of a pistil ; the pistillate flower has four sepals, the two inner of which are larger, enclosing the one- celled ovary, which in fruit is an akene, sur- rounded by the membranaceous enlarged inner sepals. The stinging hair of the nettle, when magnified, is seen to consist of a single cell, bulbous at the base, where it is surrounded by cells of the epidermis, and terminated by an ex- ceedingly sharp and fragile point, which breaks off after entering the skin and allows the irri- tating juice contained in the cell to flow into the wound. If the plant be grasped roughly, the hairs are broken off before the point can penetrate the skin, and little or no pain results. There are but five species of urtica proper in the Atlantic states, and two of these are intro- NETTLE duced from Europe. The common small nettle of Europe ( U. urens which is chosen to illus- trate the genus, is found near dwellings in the older states ; it is a monoecious, annual species, 8 to 12 in. high, with not very numerous stings. The other introduced species is the common Small Nettle (Urtica urens), showing Staminate and Pistillate Flowers. nettle (U. dioica), a perennial, 2 to 3 ft. high, with its staminate and fertile flowers in much- branched spikes on different plants ; this is so well armed with stings that, as the old herbal- ist Culpepper quaintly remarks, " it may be found by feeling on the darkest night." Of the indigenous species, the slender nettle (U. gracilis) is a perennial, 2 to 6 in. high ; U. capi- tata is a southern species, 3 to 5 ft. high ; and U. chamcedryoides, from 6 to 30 in. high, with dense globose flower clusters, is western and southern. The young shoots of nettles are used to some extent in this country, but more in Great Britain, as a pot herb or greens, and in former times the plants were blanched by earthing up, as is now practised with sea kale. Animals will not eat living nettles, unless the plants are very young; but when made into hay they are eaten readily, and they are re- garded as so productive of milk that in Swe- den and Eussia they are sometimes cultivated as fodder plants. The fibre of the plants is considered superior to that of flax, but on ac- count of its small quantity and the difficulty of separating it, little nettle cloth is now made ; in the northern parts of Europe the fibre is used for fish lines and other small cordage, and to some extent for fabrics. Several tropical species are useful for their fibres. An Aus- tralian species, U. gigas, is a tree 120 to 140 ft. high, with leaves 12 to 15 in. broad, which are abundantly furnished with stings and capable of causing great suffering. Stinging with net- tles to "let out melancholy" was prescribed by the old writers. The devil's-leaf, U. uren- tissima of Timor, is so violently poisonous that