The Cranberry. 151 



plants, and, unless a better claim be preferred by the 

 wild thyme, the smallest of flowering-shrubs, for the stems 

 and branches, though ligneous, are as fine as thread. 

 They love to creep and trail among sphagnum and other 

 little bog -plants, and to be near the glistening sun- 

 dews. Then, running to the length of about twenty 

 inches, at last they form densely entangled mats, close 

 upon the surface of the ground. When ripe, the red 

 berries, mottled with yellow or purple, are collected by 

 means of a kind of coarse wooden comb or small rake, 

 and sent to market for tarts, though if put away in closely 

 corked bottles they will keep good for a considerable 

 length of time. 



This innocent little plant grows all over the British 

 Islands, where the conditions are favourable, but is now 

 much less plentiful than formerly, and must needs still 

 further diminish in quantity, owing to the drainage and 

 cultivation of the sodden moors and bogs upon which 

 alone it can exist. It extends also over every part of 

 northern Europe, Asia, and America. In the last-named 

 country it has a powerful rival in another and much 

 larger and stronger species, more ascending in habit, and 

 producing berries more oval in figure, larger, and of a 

 brighter colour, approaching even crimson. This one, 

 the Oxycoccos macrocarpus, supplies the greater portion 

 of the cranberries ordinarily offered for sale in the shops. 

 Packed in small kegs, with a sufficiency of spring-water, 

 the annual import is now very considerable, amounting to 

 thousands of tons yearly. We might have it, if we cared, 



