WILD FRUITS 223 



and we fight rather shy of the fields, that the 

 haws become good to eat. Then there is a good 

 thickness of rich yellow flesh on the hard stones 

 that, as in most wild fruits, take up too much 

 room. No one has thought it worth while to take 

 the hawthorn in hand, and make of it a fruit as 

 superior as the apple or pear are to their wild 

 prototypes. It belongs, of course, to the great 

 rose family that has given us apple, pear, plum, 

 peach, cherry, strawberry, raspberry and many 

 another of the joys of civilized life. 



Most children know the candy-like sweetness of 

 the flesh that the hip wears between its shiny 

 red skin and the itch-provoking seeds. The 

 greenfinches know it equally well, for you see them 

 sitting plump and bonny in their livery of ripe 

 greengage colour carefully chewing the fruit of 

 the rose for the goodness that is in it. If you 

 cannot catch these sad-eyed marauders at work, 

 you can at any rate see the soft hip-skins still on 

 the twigs, from which they have sucked out the 

 inside through the outer end. 



No ecstasy of the year exceeded that with 

 which we gazed on the arched sprays of the wild 

 rose in June. Most of us admired the pink rose 

 of the sweetbriar or the woody dog-rose most, 

 but there was another beauty as sweet, if less 

 attractive, in the creamy blossom of the field rose. 

 Has our gratitude been so long-lived that we cannot 

 remember from which hedge the best sprays 

 waved their garlands ? The bright red, urn- 



