WILD FRUITS 233 



potato is hardly an exception. We do not eat its 

 fruit, and even the root that we do eat is not good 

 till it is cooked. The root of the cuckoo-pint, 

 raging with oxalic acid, is perhaps as good as the 

 potato when it is cooked, which may even be true 

 of the very deadly hemlock, wolf-bane, water 

 drop-wort and others. Our subject, however, 

 is fruits only, and it is nearly finished. The 

 cuckoo-pint should not be dangerous, its berries 

 being exhibited in so abnormal a grouping. On 

 their stiff stalk coming from nowhere, for the 

 leaves have disappeared, they remind us of some- 

 thing fungoid rather than vegetable. Children 

 have, however, fallen victims to their bright 

 colouring. It is a fiery poison, but probably its 

 scorching of the mouth comes too late. A berry 

 has been swallowed, and then the case is a bad 

 one. Happier the child that tastes gingerly 

 before eating, for he would assuredly be warned 

 and get off with nothing worse than a swollen 

 tongue. 



We would fain finish with something more 

 pleasant than these poisonous fruits. The 

 whortleberries are as wholesome a family as the 

 nightshades are dangerous. They are moorland 

 people, the whortleberry itself being the only 

 one that sometimes descends to lower levels and 

 even into such suburban places as Hindhead and 

 the almost sea-level woods round Farnham and 

 Woking. The whortleberry, bilberry, or whin- 

 berry, seems to be in fruit in June, for its somewhat 



