52 OUR COMMON FRUITS. 



their action is chemical as well as mechanical, and that 

 there must be something poisonous in their nature. 

 During the bleak days of March, before any other fruit- 

 tree has blossomed, and often even before its own leaves 

 have appeared, the Sloe unfolds its small white flowers, 

 solitary, so far as that jimplies that they do not grow in 

 clusters, but thickly strewn over the branches, and con- 

 sisting of five petals, from 20 to 30 stamens, with orange- 

 coloured anthers, and generally one, but sometimes two, 

 central styles. Balfour says that fruits formed like these 

 by the ovaries alone, are more liable to drop off and to 

 suffer from unfavourable weather than those in which the 

 calyx is retained to enter into their composition, as is the 

 case in the gooseberry, apple, and most other tribes ; but 

 when their course does run smooth, by September these 

 blossoms have matured into little violet-skinned azure- 

 bloomed balls scarcely larger than a fine black currant, 

 so austere that they can scarcely be eaten until some- 

 what mellowed by frost, and held in so little esteem even 

 by omnivorous children, that it is only by courtesy they 

 can be allowed to rank upon the list of fruits. In France 

 they are pickled while unripe in salt and vinegar, as a 

 substitute for olives, and when ripe are fermented with 

 water, to form a beverage much drunk by the lower 

 classes, though by no means wholesome to be taken habi- 

 tually, its acid astringent qualities causing internal ob- 

 structions. Properly fermented, the Sloe makes a wine 

 not unlike new port, and contributes occasionally to the 

 adulteration of that much mystified compound ; while the 

 schnaps-}oving Germans and Russians put it to the same 

 use to which they devote almost everything of a fruity 

 nature which comes in their way, and contrive to distil a 

 spirit from it. Its juice may further be used as a mark- 

 ing ink, for it gives a stain to linen or woollen which 

 cannot be washed out ; and though the plum tribe are 

 often looked on with terror as the fruitful source of 

 autumnal diarrhoea, this head of the family is so emi- 

 nently famed for the contrary effect, that its expressed 

 juice is used in pharmacy, and its bottled fruit in domes- 

 tic practice, as almost a specific against that complaint. 



