228 Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



of the hard seeds within, plenty of sugar being added, 

 make a very nice conserve or confection. The Swiss and 

 the Germans place it on table as an article of dessert. 

 It makes also an agreeable substitute for tomato-sauce. 

 In the time of Elizabeth, when certainly, good obtainable 

 fruits were fewer in kind, the prepared pulp of these wild 

 hips was held in no slight esteem. " It maketh," says 

 Gerard, " most pleasant meats and banqueting dishes, as 

 tarts and such-like." At the present day it is valued in 

 England by the apothecaries, who employ it as a pill-basis, 

 and in the making of electuaries. 



The hip of the rose, like the strawberry, in its curious 

 botanical nature, is almost without parallel. Here we 

 have the thalamus, or receptacle upon which the ovaries 

 are seated, shaped like an urn. The veritable fruits 

 are the hard and hairy stones discovered in the interior 

 of the hip upon tearing it open. Strange, yet perhaps 

 not so strange, that the queen of flowers should thus 

 modestly conceal from public gaze the little atoms that 

 are to carry her loveliness abreast of Time. 



THE FIG (Ficus Carica). 



THE fig-tree, in all likelihood, supplied the fruit with 

 which mankind has been longest acquainted ; of which, 

 at all events, mention is made very early in the oldest 

 literature the world possesses. As an article of food it 

 was probably resorted to at quite as early a period as the 



