222 Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



piling up imagery in a way scarcely paralleled before or 

 since, every word a picture, every simile a petition : 



"Ipsa tuis manibus silvestri nata sub umbra 

 Mollia fraga leges."* 



When first established as an English garden fruit is 

 not known. The name is the Anglo-Saxon streowberige, 

 the first part referring to the resemblance of the runners 

 to straws, or anything "strewed." "Straberry ripe" was 

 one of the cries of London in the time of the Tudors, 

 but all the fruit then offered for sale was doubtless 

 collected, after the manner of blackberries, from wilder- 

 ness plants. 



Botanically regarded, this fruit is one of the most 

 curious known to science. It corresponds to the white 

 cone of the raspberry, being the " receptacle " immensely 

 enlarged, cells upon cells innumerable. The seed-like 

 specks upon the surface are the genuine pericarps; every 

 one of them contains a seed, and began life as a distinct 

 and independent ovary. The strawberry is in a certain 

 sense a raspberry reversed. In the raspberry the torus is 

 dry, and the ovaries become drupels; in the strawberry it 

 is the torus which becomes the soft and semi-juicy part, 

 while the ovaries remain as they were. The name of 

 " etserio " applies equally to both conditions. An honest 

 and painstaking effort in the same direction is made by 



* Met. xiii. 815. For other classical allusions to the strawberry, 

 vide Met. i. 104, and Virgil, Eel. iii. 92. All the allusions are to 

 the wild fruit. There is no reason to suppose that the strawberry 

 was ever cultivated by the Romans. 



