214 ROSACEA 



in advilterating port wine, and books openly avowing this adulteration, and 

 recommending various ingredients and methods of preparing it, have been, 

 a few years since, pul)lished in England. Two gallons of sloes was one of 

 the articles directed to be employed for this purpose. The Eev. C. A. Johns 

 remarks, in his volumes on the Forest Trees of Britain — -"So impudently 

 and notoriously is this fraud carried on in London, and so boldly is it avowed, 

 that there are books published, called Publicans' Guides, etc., in which 

 recipes are given for the manufacture of port wine from cider, brandy, and 

 sloe juice, coloured with tincture of red sanders and cudbear. This villainous 

 compound may be concocted into 'Old Port,' in a few days, by the admixture 

 of catechu. The corks may be stained by being soaked in a strong decoction 

 of Brazil wood and a little alum ; and even bottles are manufactured to 

 contain a sufficient quantity of lime to be sensibly acted on by the acid, and 

 to produce a counterfeit crust." Scarcely any article of human consumption 

 has been so much mingled with spurious ingredients as wine, and few 

 adulterations have been more deleterious in their nature than some of these. 

 Beckmann says, " The inventor of these practices deserves, for making them 

 known, as severe a reprobation as Berthold Schwartz, the supposed inventor 

 of gunpowder." The thickened juice of the unripe sloe is used in Germany 

 for making an ink for marking linen, and its tracings are permanent. In 

 France the sloes in a green state are prepared as olives, and eaten at dessert ; 

 and in Russia the matured fruit is crushed and made into a fermented liquor. 



The Blackthorn has some straight stems, and these having no thorns at 

 their lower parts, are sometimes used as walking-sticks, and afford by the 

 marking of their knots a pretty material for this purpose ; but the wood is 

 not often sufficiently large to be of nwch use. The ordinary height of a 

 Sloe-bush is about two or three feet, though in some instances the stem is 

 fifteen or twenty feet high. Loudon mentions that about Montargis the 

 tree is called Mhe du bois, because it has been remarked there that when it 

 was growing on the borders of woods, "its underground shoots, and the 

 suckers which sprung from them, had a constant tendency to extend the 

 wood over the adjoining forests ; and that if the proprietors of lands near the 

 forests where the Sloe-thorn formed the boundary did not take the precaution 

 of stopping the progress of its roots, these would in a short time spread over 

 their land, and the suckers which arose from them would, by affording 

 protection to the seeds of timber trees, which would be deposited among 

 them by the winds or by birds, ultimately, and at no great distance of time, 

 cover the whole with forest trees." 



The bark of the Sloe-tree is taken medicinally, and forms no bad sub- 

 stitute for the Jesuits' bark ; it is also used for tanning leather. 



The variety termed Primus insititia is the Bullace ; it has often scarcely 

 any spines, and is then chiefly to be distinguished by having more downy 

 leaves. The fruit is also much larger, and the leaves appear with the 

 flowers in April and May. It is not nearly so common a plant as the Black- 

 thorn. From this bush, or from the variety called Wild Plum-tree (Frunus 

 domestica), we derive the cultivated Plums. The latter tree is seldom found 

 wild, and resembles the Bullace, but that it has no spines on its branches, 

 and the under part of the leaf is not downy, except in some cases, where a 



