THE CEANBEREY AND ITS ALLIES. 159 



has been introduced into England and grown here, so as to 

 afford the opportunity of fair comparison. Sir J. Banks, 

 who first planted it, found it easier of culture than even the 

 native cranberry. To be put into bottles or close barrels 

 is all that is required in order to preserve cranberries for 

 winter use, and if a small quantity of more highly flavoured 

 preserved fruits, such as raspberries, be used with them, 

 they make an excellent addition to the winter bill of fare. 

 The ordinary kind abound in Sweden, where, in Lin- 

 naeus's time, they were chiefly employed as a detergent to 

 clean plate ; and another species, called Snowberries, on 

 account of the fruit being white, and which has a flavour 

 like that of bitter almonds, was brought from Nova Scotia 

 in 1760, but has not yet been popularized. 



The cranberry-plant is a low, trailing, evergreen shrub, 

 with very small, smooth, unserrated leaves, and bright 

 rose-coloured flowers,* having a four-toothed calyx and a 

 corolla deeply cleft into four segments, which curve back- 

 wards like those of the common nightshade, a flower to 

 which, in shape and size, they bear much resemblance, 

 though differing in many other respects. They grow in 

 small clusters at the ends of the branches, one blossom on 

 each long curved flower-stalk ; and when, in due course, 

 they are succeeded by the crimson berries drooping at the 

 extremity of these slender bending stalks, like the head 

 of an aquatic bird at the end of its arched neck, the 

 reason becomes sufficiently apparent why our forefathers 

 bestowed on them the name of mme-berries. The plant 

 belongs to the natural order Ericaceae or Heathworts, 

 as does also its very near relation the Bilberry or Whortle- 

 berry (Vaccinium), classed with it by Linna3us, and 

 with which it is still sometimes confused even by writers 

 of some pretensions ; but though the fruit of some 

 species of Vaccinium is extremely similar to that of the 

 Oxy coccus, there is a marked distinction in the flower, 

 the latter, instead of having divided and recurved petals, 

 displaying a corolla which looks, at least, like a quite entire 

 little bell with a large ovary surrounded by 10 stamens in 



See Plate IV., fig. 6. 



