The Strawberry. 221 



acetous fermentation. Under cultivation it requires but 

 little shelter ; even in bleak and elevated places it is still 

 a success. The odour is like the dappled pink of the 

 tip-top sky at sunset ; it comes, we must be quick, or it 

 has faded away : a slight shower is often enough to spoil 

 the promise of days. Like the raspberry, to be enjoyed 

 in perfection, the strawberry should be the accompani- 

 ment of lingering and chatty stroll about the garden, 

 eaten where it grows. In one form or another, it is dif- 

 fused over many lands, growing wild throughout Europe 

 and Russian and Central Asia, and northern America, 

 and extending, both in the old world and the new, to the 

 arctic circle. One of the varieties occurs as far away as 

 Chili. It is found also in the island of Madeira. So 

 calmly does the plant accommodate itself to varied sur- 

 roundings, that near Malaga strawberries grow beside 

 oranges and citrons, and there they are ripe by the end 

 of April. Open woods, where dry, and especially upon 

 mountains; green banks, weedy and turf-topped walls, 

 are its delight. So fond is it of craggy slopes, that it 

 might almost be called a rockery plant : the wood, never- 

 theless, is the chief scene of association : 



" One day as they all three together went 

 Into the wood to gather strawberries." 



Faery Queene, vii. 34. 



The ancient Greeks seem not to have noticed either 

 the plant or the fruit : the ancient Roman writers speak 

 only of the fruit, not of the plant, and of the former only 

 in the plural, fraga, as when the Cyclop woos Galatea, 



