92 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



pounds. Boil it to the thickness of honey." The fabrication 

 of pilosella evidently required a very considerable know- 

 ledge of our wild plants before one could say quite happily, 

 " prescriptions accurately dispensed." 



BARBERRY (Berberis Vulgaris) 



In many parts of Britain, but more especially in the 

 north, one may find the Barberry, often merely a shrub, but 

 at times considerably more. It is a plant of the hedgerows, 

 copses, and open woods. It has rather a partiality for a 

 chalk soil. As a hedge-plant it has its attractions, as it is 

 tremendously thorny and bushy, grows rapidly, is close- 

 growing, and takes free-clipping kindly. It is often from 

 its ornamental character transferred to the shrubbery, being 

 very attractive when in early Summer a mass of yellow 

 blossom, in Autumn a mass of scarlet fruit. 



The leaves are very numerous, small, of a palish green, 

 clustered together, oval in form, stiff in character, minutely 

 toothed, each serration prolonged, so that the leaf appears as 

 though fringed with fine hairs ; at the base of each leaf 

 cluster one finds three thorns, or, to be more correct, 

 one thorn that at its base spreads into three arms. " The 

 leaves," quoth one of the ancients, " are vsed of diuers to 

 season meate with, and instead of a Sallad, as be those of 

 Sorrell." They have a pleasant acidity, as one quickly 

 determines on biting a small portion. 



The flowers are yellow and six-petalled, arranged in 

 pendulous clusters, racemes, and flowering in the early 

 Summer. On first opening they have the delicate smell 

 of the cowslip, but the odour towards evening and on 



