HA WTHORN 9 



the landscape. These berries are known as haws, a name 

 that has descended to us from Saxon times. These haws 

 are very popular with many kinds of birds, and supply 

 them with very welcome and abundant food, and as the 

 Winter draws on they become in great request. Bacon, 

 in his quaint Natural History, declares it " an observation 

 amongst country people that years of store of hawes and 

 hips do commonly portend cold winters ; and they ascribe 

 it to God's Providence, that, as the Scripture saith, 

 reacheth even to the falling of a sparrow, and much more 

 is it like to reach to the preservation of birds in such a 

 season." 



To the ordinary man or woman — we exclude the ordinary 

 boy, as he is practically omnivorous — these haws do not 

 appeal very strongly. One does not hanker after them, 

 or count the months round to their return, but they are 

 eatable, and are occasionally eaten in time of dearth, and 

 in some parts of the world they are even fermented into 

 a kind of wine. In an old book open before us we see 

 that they are declared to be " good food for Hogges, and 

 therefore the Swineherds do beat them down for them." 

 One can only wonder, as in the case of those multi- 

 tudinous ants that the great ant-eater draws up on his 

 tongue, or the animalcules that the whale, some millions 

 their size, makes a meal on, how many of these little 

 berries are necessary to produce that feeling of satiety 

 that the Hogge would consider as approaching his ideal. 



Our forefathers believed that he who wore a piece of 

 hawthorn in his hat was safe from all peril of lightning, 

 could face unscathed all heaven's artillery ; and another 

 article of faith was that its spiny stem was entwined Into 



