CHAPTER XII. 



CORA A IT D 3v K O N O S . 



I. OF all the lovely wild plants and few, mountain- 

 bred, in Britain, are other than lovely, that fill the clefts 

 and crest the ridges of my Brantwood rock, the dearest 

 to me, by far, are the clusters of whortleberry which 

 divide possession of the lower slopes with the wood hya- 

 cinth and pervenche. They are personally and specially 

 dear to me for their association in my mind with the 

 woods of Montanv 7 ert ; but the plant itself, irrespective 

 of all accidental feeling, is indeed so beautiful in all its 

 ways so delicately strong in the spring of its leafage, 

 so modestly wonderful in the formation of its fruit, and 

 so pure in choice of its haunts, not capriciously or un- 

 familiarly, but growing in luxuriance through all the 

 healthiest and sweetest seclusion of mountain territory 

 throughout Europe, that I think I may without any 

 sharp remonstrance be permitted to express for this once 

 only, personal feeling in my nomenclature, calling it in 

 Latin ' Myrtilla Cara, and in French < Myrtille Cherie, ' 

 but retaining for it in English its simply classic name, 

 'Blue Whortle.' 



