been introduced into England and grown here, so as to afford an opportunity of fair comparison. Sir J. Banks, who first planted it, found it easier of culture than even the native cranberry, and in one year obtained from eighteen feet of ground a crop sufficient to fill 140 ordinary preserving-bottles. To be put into bottles or close barrels is all that is required in order to preserve cranberries for winter use, and if a small quantity of more highly flavoured preserved fruits, such as raspberries, be used with them, they make an excellent addition to the winter bill of fare. The ordinary kinds abound in Sweden, where, in Linnæus’s time, they were chiefly employed as a detergent to clean plate; another species, called snowberries, on account of the fruit being white, and which has a flavour like that of bitter almonds, was brought from Nova Scotia in 1760, but has not yet become popularised.
The cranberry plant is a low, trailing, evergreen shrub, with very small, smooth, unserrated leaves, and bright rose-coloured flowers, having a four-toothed calyx and a corolla deeply cleft into four segments, which curve backwards like those of the common nightshade, a flower to which, in shape and size they bear much resemblance, though differing in many other respects. They grow in small clusters at the ends of the branches, one blossom on each long curved flower-stalk; and when, in due course, they are succeeded by the crimson berries drooping at the extremity of these slender bending stalks, like the head of an aquatic bird at the end of its arched neck, the reason becomes sufficiently apparent why our forefathers bestowed on them the name of crane-berries. The plant belongs to the natural order Ericaceæ, or heathworts, as does also its very near relation the bilberry or wortleberry (Vaccinium), classed with it by Linnæus, and with which it is still sometimes confused even by writers of some pretensions; but though the fruit of some species of Vaccinium is extremely similar to that of the Oxycoccus, there is a marked distinction in the flower, the latter, instead of having divided and recurved petals, displaying a corolla which looks at least like a quite entire little bell, with a large ovary surrounded by ten stamens in its centre, and it is not until the fruit is formed that it is seen by the circle of five little scars upon its surface, beyond the ten dots which show where the stamens once were, and a central mark denoting the place of the style, that this globular corolla was really composed of five pieces, though adhering so closely as to seem but one. The nearest ally to the cranberry is the Vaccinium Vitis Idæa, a low-growing evergreen, with foliage very like that of the box used for bordering garden-beds, and flowers with a bell-shaped corolla, rather deeply cleft by four notches, growing in racemes at the end of the branches. The berries, too, are crimson, and ripening about August in some parts of England, chiefly in Westmoreland, are often made into tarts under the name of “cow-berries,” but are more astringent and less pleasant than either the cranberry or the common whortle or bil-berry. In Sweden, however, large quantities are yearly made into jelly, which is eaten as a sauce with all kinds of meat, being even preferred by many to currant jelly. Shut into a close vessel, and placed in a cellar, they keep well for a long time, and the wine-makers of Paris preserve them thus from June until vintage time, using them then to give colour to their grape juice—a practice harmless, at least so long as they confine themselves to the use of this species; but it is said they also resort sometimes to the Vaccinium uliginosum, a larger, darker-coloured fruit, with less flavour, but which, taken in any quantity, causes giddiness and headache, and which is therefore employed occasionally in England also to produce an illegitimate “headiness” in beer. A white-fruited species is also sometimes met with, chiefly in Lancashire.
The kind most often seen is the Vaccinium myrtillus, variously named the whortle, hurtle, bil, or blae-berry, a small, round, purple or almost black fruit, covered with a delicate azure bloom. Growing on heaths or waste places, it is not only indigenous in every county of this country, from the warm Land’s End to the bleak highlands of Scotland, but is actually so peculiarly at home in this happy land, as to be reckoned one of the plants which, if allowed, would over-run Britain, and form one of the largest elements in its natural vegetation. Many kinds of game resort to it in the autumn to feed on its berries and find covert among the plants, which, in the pine forests of Scotland attain sometimes a height of three feet, and bear fruit as large as black currants, which the Highlanders make into a jelly, often mixed with whisky, to be presented to strangers as a special mark of hospitality. The berries, being very astringent, are used medicinally in the Western Isles in cases of diarrhœa and dysentery, and in many places are eaten for pleasure, either uncooked, with cream, or made into tarts; and, in Poland, where they abound, they are considered a great delicacy when mingled with wood-strawberries and new milk. According to Gerard, bilberries grew once on Hampstead Heath, and at Finchley and Highgate, but are not to be met with now in the vicinity of London, though very abundant in some parts of Surrey, where they are gathered by the cottagers’ children, and sold at the nearest market, seldom finding their way so far as to the metropolis. Nor has the plant been yet introduced into gardens, though it will grow in sandy peat, kept moist in any shady place; and McIntosh affirms that those who are fond of adding to their dessert will find several species of Vaccinium well worthy of cultivation; while the editors of the “Nouveau Du Hamel” observe, with almost bitter sarcasm, concerning the similar neglected fate of the same plant in France, that had it only had the good fortune to have been brought from China or New Holland, and been only obtainable with great difficulty as a costly exotic, instead of simply growing wild in the forests of Montmorency, it would certainly have been very highly valued, if only for its beautiful little pink blossom. These charming little wax-like flowers, which appear in May in the form of almost globular bells, narrowed at the neck, and slightly toothed at the edge by five small notches, certainly rival in elegance many foreign heaths. They grow singly, upon drooping stalks, among the small serrated and deciduous leaves, and in