STRAWBERRIES— ORIGIN AND HISTORY. 47 



of the ancients. It is to it that the suggestive lines of Virgil 



refer : — 



" Ye boys that gather flowers and strawberries, 

 Lo, hid within the grass an adder lies." 



There is no proof, I believe, that the strawberry was cul- 

 tivated during any of the earlier civilizations. Some who 

 wrote most explicitly concerning the fruit culture of their time 

 do not mention it ; and Virgil, Ovid, and Pliny name it but 

 casually, and with no reference to its cultivation. It may 

 appear a little strange that the luxurious Romans, who fed 

 on nightingales' tongues, peacocks' brains, and scoured 

 earth and air for delicacies, should have given but little 

 attention to this fruit. Possibly they early learned the fact 

 that this species is essentially a wildling, and, like the trail- 

 ing arbutus, thrives best in its natural haunts. The best 

 that grew could be gathered from mountain- slopes and in 

 the crevices of rocks. Moreover, those old revellers became 

 too wicked and sensual to relish Alpine strawberries. 



Its congener, the Wood strawberry, was the burden of 

 one of the London street cries four hundred years ago ; and 

 to-day the same cry, in some language or other, echoes 

 around the northern hemisphere as one of the inevitable 

 and welcome sounds of spring and early summer. 



But few, perhaps, associate this lowly little fruit, that is 

 almost as deHcate and shy as the anemone, with tragedy ; 

 and yet its chief poetical associations are among the darkest 

 and saddest that can be imagined. Shakspeare's mention 

 of the strawberry in the play of Richard III. was an uncon- 

 scious but remarkable illustration of the second line already 

 quoted from Virgil : — 



" Lo, hid within the grass an adder lies." 

 The bit of history which is the occasion of this allusion is 

 given in the quaint old English of Sir Thomas More, who 



