STRAWBERRIES. 75 



angling. In the same field one boy gets big berries 

 and plenty of them ; another wanders up and down, 

 and finds only a few little ones. He cannot see 

 them ; he does not know how to divine them where 

 they lurk under the leaves and vines. The berry- 

 grower knows that in the cultivated patch his pick- 

 ers are very unequal, the baskets of one boy or girl 

 having so inferior a look that it does not seem possi- 

 ble they could have been filled from the same vines 

 with certain others. But neither blunt fingers nor 

 blunt eyes are hard to find, and as there are those 

 who can see nothing clearly, so there are those who 

 can touch nothing deftly or gently. 



The cultivation of the strawberry is thought to be 

 comparatively modern. The ancients appear to have 

 been a carnivorous race ; they gorged themselves 

 with meat, while the modern man makes larger and 

 larger use of fruits and vegetables, until this genera- 

 tion is doubtless better fed than any that has pre- 

 ceded it. The strawberry and the apple, and such 

 vegetables as celery, ought to lengthen human life, 

 at least to correct its biliousness and make it more 

 sweet and sanguine. 



The first impetus to strawberry culture seems to 

 have been given by the introduction of our field berry 

 (Frag aria Virginiana) into England in the seven- 

 teenth century, though not much progress was made 

 till the eighteenth. This variety is much more fra- 

 grant and aromatic than the native berry of Europe, 

 though less so in that climate than when grown here. 



