The Blackberry. 205 



of heaven prove a micher, and eat blackberries ? " To 

 " mich " signifies to lurk out of sight, to hide one's self. 

 Boys, playing truant from school, afraid to go home, and 

 who wander up and down the lanes to escape observation, 

 are still, in the south-western counties, said to "mooch." 

 If we care to ask was any note taken of the blackberry 

 in the classical ages, there is the picture in Ovid of the 

 " golden world," when men were apt to " fleet the time 

 carelessly."* Apart from the context, that morum, the 

 word used in this fine passage, denoted with the ancient 

 Romans the blackberry as well as the mulberry is shown 

 by Pliny (xv. 27). The apothecaries of the middle ages 

 called blackberries mora rubi. The common French 

 name for them is mdres de hate or mtires sauvages. In 

 Suffolk, to this day, they are " mulberries." 



The blackberry occurs in woods, thickets, and hedges, 

 in tangled wildernesses and waste places, over nearly the 

 whole of Europe, and in Russian and Central Asia. But 

 it does not ascend to alpine heights, nor in regard to 

 latitude is it an arctic plant. Describing the productions 

 of the Riviera, "There is a friend of our childhood," 

 says Dr. Bennet, " the common Blackberry, which we are 

 glad to welcome even at Mentone. In the warmest, 

 wildest, and rockiest regions it grows as vigorously, as 

 joyously, as in any quiet lane in England or Scotland ; 

 only, in such situations, it becomes an evergreen in this 

 sense, that it does not lose one set of leaves until it has 

 got another. It is, in truth, a singularly hardy plant, with 



* Met. i. 105. Compare Fasti, iv. 509. 



