The Dog-Rose. 227 



the profits, are kept secret. They may be imagined, 

 perhaps, from the fact that in Covent Garden, in March, 

 baskets of twelve berries apiece fetch four shillings, or at 

 the rate of fourpence per berry. 



The largest strawberry-gardens in the world are in the 

 Cray Valley, Kent, where the Messrs. Vinson, of Swanley, 

 devote to this fruit about five hundred acres of land, and 

 gather in the season about a thousand tons. The value 

 of the crop varies from 20 to ;6o per ton for the best 

 fruit, and from ^15 to ^"20 for the inferior, used for 

 preserving. 



THE DOG-ROSE (Rosa canina). 



LIKE the berbery and the mountain-ash, the Dog-rose 

 claims a place among the fruiting-plants, not because of 

 the eatableness of the produce as it comes from the 

 bough, but for its value when in some way preserved. 

 Every one knows the tremulous sprays and arching 

 wreaths of this beautiful hedgerow plant, covered at 

 midsummer with little pink calathi, their young hearts 

 golden, and so fragrant withal ; so charming again, in 

 late autumn, when the scarlet hips cast those magical 

 points of bright colour amid the frosted browns and the 

 overworn and fading green, keeping company in their 

 lustre with the deep-hued Tamus, and made even brighter 

 by the contrast of the feathered silver-grey of the wild 

 clematis. When fully ripe, mellowed and softened by the 

 touch of early frost, the hips of the dog-rose, after removal 



