300 THE EVOLUTION OP OUR NATIVE FRUITS 



to tame the wild protege of the forest did not often 

 prove satisfactory. These plants evidently did not 

 take kindly to the refinements of civilization, and 

 longed for their free and easy life of the wood. Cap- 

 tain Lovett reports repeated failures in trying to get 

 good berries by this method. He persevered for five 

 years, and at last gave up in despair, about 1840, and 

 surrendered this wild gypsy of the fruits to its native 

 haunts as untamable. In spite of these discouraging 

 results he evidently did not give up the dream of a 

 cultivated blackberry, for Downing gives him the 

 credit of having introduced the Dorchester, which in 

 time proved so valuable, although according to Mar- 

 shall P. Wilder, as reported in the 'Transactions of 

 the Massachusetts Horticultural Society' for 1883, 

 p. 129, it was brought to notice by Eliphalet Thayer, 

 who first exhibited it before that society, August 7, 

 1841. 



"But the first introductions to cultivation, the 

 Dorchester and New Rochelle, were not calculated to 

 bring swift and lasting popularity to the blackberry 

 as a garden fruit, for although large and attractive, 

 their habit of turning black before they are ripe nearly 

 always led to their being gathered and eaten while 

 green, and their consequent condemnation as sour and 

 poor in quality. Moreover, their culture, being little 

 understood, led to frequent failures and unsatisfactory 

 results, while their propensity to persist and spread, 

 aided by their unmerciful thorns, conspired to render 

 them a terror to many timid gardeners. In spite of 

 all this, the blackberry has steadily pushed its way 

 into prominence, until it is to-day one of our most 

 satisfactory and profitable crops. Here, as with all 



