BIRD-CHERR V 95 



tion if the pounded coral could be taken out. Under these 

 circumstances certainly it would require renaming, but that, 

 after all, is a detail, and of much less importance than 

 swallowing ground-up coral. 



BIRD-CHERRY (Prunus Padus) 



We may from time to time find the Bird-Cherry, Prunus 

 Tadus, ordinarily as a hedgerow plant, but sometimes as 

 a goodly tree of twenty feet in height. It bears in the 

 Spring long pendant and graceful bunches of white 

 blossoms. These are followed in due course by the fruit, 

 hanging in bunches, something like currants. These are 

 at first green, then red, and finally, in August, deep black. 

 They are nauseous in taste. Our forefathers, or more 

 probably our foremothers, used to tie these berries round 

 the necks of their children to ward off various evils, bodily, 

 mental, and spiritual, from them. Birds are very partial 

 to the fruits ; they are, in fact, as the name suggests, the 

 birds' cherries, though, unfortunately for the fruit-grower, 

 they by no means confine themselves to them. They are 

 sometimes called heg-berries, hag-berries, or hack-berries, 

 the first half of the word in each case having as its root 

 the Anglo-Saxon hege, a hedge. The name, in one or 

 other of these forms, is centuries old, but does not strike 

 one as being a particularly happy one, as they are no more 

 and no less hedge-berries than many other plants, hawthorn, 

 privet, ivy, blackthorn, and many others that at once occur 

 to us. 



