THE WHOKTLEBERKY PASTURE. 211 



though a few species are common in Middle and North- 

 ern Europe, they: are in no part of the world so abundant 

 as in North America. The whortleberry tribe of plants 

 form a conspicuous feature of New England landscape, 

 especially near the coast. No single species has been do- 

 mesticated, though any one of them would well reward 

 the labor of the cultivator if the fruit could not be 

 obtained from the fields. Their fruit is well known to 

 the inhabitants of the Eastern States. Very little has 

 been written upon it, and few persons are aware of its 

 importance to the inhabitants of North America. Bota- 

 nists make no generic distinction between the whortleberry 

 and the blueberry; but we may distinguish the two at 

 once by their different flavor, and not by their color. The 

 whortleberry is less acidulous, less mucilaginous, and con- 

 tains a harder seed than the blueberry. The flowers of 

 the two species differ as widely as their fruits : those of 

 the blueberry are large and white ; those of the whortle- 

 berry are greenish, tipped with red, smaller and more con- 

 tracted in the mouth. There is no family of plants that 

 runs into a greater number of varieties in a wild state ; 

 but I have never seen one that seemed to possess the 

 characters of the blueberry and whortleberry combined. 

 With regard to their colors it may be remarked, that while 

 there are blueberries which are black, there is no whortle- 

 berry which is purely blue. 



It may truly be asserted that if the cherry and the 

 whortleberry, with all their varieties, were to become 

 extinct, the want of the latter would be most painfully 

 felt by the mass of our population. We were not taught 

 by the Europeans to appreciate the value of our wild 

 fruits. " In Scotland," said one of a company of Scotch 

 girls whom I met in a whortleberry field, " we have no 

 wild fruits. All our fruits are in gardens." In this coun- 

 try, where whortleberries are so common as to be found 



