EOSE TRIBE 231 



in gcardens, that of placing straw among the ripening fruits to prevent their 

 being soiled. Another more probable derivation has been from the practice, 

 still so frequent among country people, of threading the strawberries on the 

 slender stem of a grass. That this was done some centuries since, we know 

 from a passage in Browne's " Pastorals " : — 



" The wood-nymphs oftentimes would busy be, 

 And pluck for him the blushing strawberry ; 

 Making of them a bracelet on a bent, 

 Which for a favour to this swain they scut." 



As Professor Burnett, however, remarks, the word is more likely to be a cor- 

 ruption of stray-berry, from the trailing or Avandering of its runners, which 

 stray to great distances from the parent plant, and establish colonies all 

 around. John Lydgate, who died in 1483, writes the word straherry, in his 

 poem called " London Lyckpenny ;" but the orthography of words in those 

 days was too uncertain to afford much ground for ascertaining exactly their 

 origin, and the poet would have been likely enough, had he been writing the 

 M'ord a year after, to spell it in some other way. 



The Strawberry is much cultivated both in our own country and also on 

 the Continent. In the Isle of Jersey the plants are covered over during 

 cold weather with layers of seaweed, a plan which is said to increase the size 

 and goodness of the fruit. Several species have been introduced into this 

 kingdom, and our woodland fruit affords, under culture, several varieties of 

 white and red strawberries. Mr. T. Hudson Turner, in a paper on the state 

 of Horticulture in England some centuries since, says, " Strawberries and 

 raspberries rarely occur in early accounts, owing probably to the fact that 

 they were not cultivated in gardens, and knoAvn only as wild fruits. Straw- 

 berries are named once in the Household Iloll of the Countess of Leicester for 

 the year 1265. The plant does not seem to have been much grown even at 

 the end of the sixteenth century. Lawson speaks of the roots of trees being 

 ' powdred ' with strawberries, red, white, and green. Easj^berries, barberries, 

 and currants, he describes as grown in borders. Both fruits, being indigenous, 

 were probal)ly to be found plentifully in the woods of ancient times, and 

 thence brought to market, as they are in the present day in Italy and the 

 other parts of Europe." 



We find one of Ben Jonson's personages saying — 



" My son has sent you 

 A pot of strawberries gather'd in the wood 

 To mingle with your cream." 



And we know that in the time of Henry VIII. strawberries were sold at 

 fourpence a bushel. Tusser, who wrote in the latter part of this reign, says, 

 in his advice to the farmer — 



*' Wife, into the garden and set me a plot 

 AVith Strawberry-roots of the best to be got ; 

 Such growing abroad among thorns in the wood, 

 Well chosen and pricked, prove excellent good." 



In earlier times than these, however, they were occasionally cultivated in 

 gardens. Hollinshed, who furnished Shakespeare with many materials for 



