STRAWBERRIES. 67 



snap and crackle with which it salutes the ear on be- 

 ing plucked from the stems ? It is a threat to one 

 sense that the other is soon to verify. It snaps to 

 the ear as it smacks to the tongue. All other berries 

 are tame beside it. 



The plant is almost an evergreen ; it loves the 

 coverlid of the snow, and will keep fresh through the 

 severest winters with a slight protection. The frost 

 leaves its virtues in it. The berry is a kind of vege- 

 table snow. How cool, how tonic, how melting, and 

 how perishable ! It is almost as easy to keep frost. 

 Heat kills it, and sugar quickly breaks up its cells. 



Is there anything like the odor of strawberries ? 

 The next best thing to tasting them is to smell them ; 

 one may put his nose to the dish while the fruit is 

 yet too rare and choice for his fingers. Touch not 

 and taste not, but take a good smell and go mad. 

 Last fall I potted some of the Downer, and in the 

 winter grew them in the house. In March the ber- 

 ries were ripe, only four or five on a plant, just 

 enough, all told, to make one consider whether it was 

 not worth while to kill off the rest of the household, 

 so that the berries need not be divided. But if every 

 tongue could not have a feast, every nose banqueted 

 daily upon them. They filled the house with per- 

 fume. The Downer is remarkable in this respect. 

 Grown in the open field, it surpasses in its odor any 

 strawberry of my acquaintance. And it is scarcely 

 less agreeable to the taste. It is a very beautiful 

 berry to look upon, round, light pink, with a delicate, 



