58 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



if ever that much-abused servant, the stomach, says 

 Amen, or those faithful handmaidens, the liver and 

 spleen, nudge each other delightedly, it must be 

 when one on a torrid summer day passes by the solid 

 and carnal dinner for this simple Arcadian dish. 



The wild strawberry, like the wild apple, is spicy 

 and high-flavored, but, unlike the apple, it is also 

 mild and delicious. It has the true rustic sweetness 

 and piquancy. What it lacks in size, when compared 

 with the garden berry, it makes up in intensity. It 

 is never dropsical or overgrown, but firm-fleshed and 

 hardy. Its great enemies are the plow, gypsum, and 

 the horse-rake. It dislikes a limestone soil, but 

 seems to prefer the detritus of the stratified rock. 

 Where the sugar maple abounds, I have always found 

 plenty of wild strawberries. We have two kinds, 

 — the wood berry and the field berry. The former 

 is as wild as a partridge. It is found in open places 

 in the woods and along the borders, growing beside 

 stumps and rocks, never in abundance, but very 

 sparsely. It is small, cone-shaped, dark red, shiny, 

 and pimply. It looks woody, and tastes so. It has 

 never reached the table, nor made the acquaintance 

 of cream. A quart of them, at a fair price for human 

 2abor, would be Avorth their weight in silver at least. 

 (Yet a careful observer writes me that in certain 

 sections in the western part of New York they are 

 very plentiful.) 



Ovid mentions the wood strawberry, which would 

 lead one to infer that they were more abundant in 

 his time and country than in ours. 



