SWEET BRIAR 21 



The greeu herbere 



With Sicamour was set and eglatere,' 



The hips of the various roses are pleasantly sweet to the 

 taste and especially when mellowed by a little frost, but 

 within the outer covering the one-seeded carpels lie 

 ensconced in a bed of soft hairs, and if any of these be 

 swallowed they prove most irritating to the throat. One 

 sometimes finds these hips an item in the repasts of our 

 forefathers. Gerard, we see, writes in 1633, "The fruit 

 when it is ripe maketh most pleasant meats and banquetting 

 dishes, as tarts and such-like ; the making wherof I 

 commit to the cunning cooke." As, however, he adds 

 " and teeth to eat them in the rich man's mouth," it would 

 seem to show that even the best culinary skill the wealthy 

 could command found them a little difficult to deal with. 

 At all events, we have in these days of world-wide commerce 

 so much greater choice of fruit than our ancestors that 

 these hips will probably henceforth be handed over un- 

 grudgingly to the birds. 



Conserve of roses figures in the pharmacopoeia ; while 

 acidulous and refrigerant it is chiefly used as a vehicle 

 for other medicines. It is prepared by beating up the 

 pulp of the fruit of the dog-rose with three times its 

 weight of white sugar. In Russia and Sweden this 

 sweetened pulp, after fermentation, is made into a kind 

 of wine. 



We not infrequently find on the wild rose a curious 

 flossy tuft of a dull crimson colour. It is indeed so 



' In like manner Barnfield, a less read poet, in his Affectionate Shepherd, 

 writes, 



I would make cabinets for thee, my love, 

 Sweet-smelling arbours made of Eglantine. 



