BERRIES. 



" In her days, every man shall eat in safety 

 Under his own vine, what he plants, and sing 

 The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours ; 

 God shall be truly known, and those about her, 

 From her shall read the ways of perfect honour, 

 And by those claim their greatness, not by blood. " 



King Henry the Eighth, v. 4. 



TRICTLY speaking, or in the precise and 

 technical sense of the term, as understood by 

 botanists, a "berry" is a fruit of the kind illus- 

 trated in grapes and currants a thin-skinned 

 bag of juice, or of very soft pulp, containing 

 several seeds, or at times only a single seed. 

 The word is of very ancient extraction, belonging to the 

 northern nations, and coming proximately from the Anglo- 

 Saxon berige or berga, with the primitive sense, it would 



