228 THE RING OF NATURE 



blackberry and the sloe of present berries are truly 

 edible. Some would deny that of the sloe, which 

 even with the bloom of ripeness on it makes an 

 astonishingly sour mouthful, setting the teeth on 

 edge and compelling a wry face in the most stoical 

 of us. But a few cold nights of autumn or the 

 first frost will knock the bitterness out of it and 

 render it eatable enough, while we need not say 

 that, as sloe cheese or the flavouring element of 

 sloe gin, this little fruit redeems the reputation 

 that belongs to the plum family. 



Otherwise, our autumn berries are inedible 

 and often poisonous. A month ago I stooped in 

 the tangly undergrowth of the wood to pick the 

 first dewberry. It had but one big black lobe 

 of flesh, as the dewberry sometimes has. The 

 calyx stuck out round it like a gladstone collar, 

 and everything seemed fairly in order. But the 

 stalk on which the berry was set reached down 

 among the leaves of dewberry and other things, 

 till it passed through a quartet of leaves without 

 stalks and declared the plant to be the poisonous 

 herb Paris. Thus does it lie about among honest 

 fruits for the undoing of the unwary. 



There is a plant in the woods that is able in the 

 depth of whiter to remind us of spicy South Sea 

 islands, coral strands, parrot fish, and all other 

 tropical luxuriance. It is the spurge laurel, with 

 its long palm-like trunk at the tip of which is 

 borne a crown of evergreen, highly polished leaves. 

 The height of this coco-nut palm is only three or 



