STRAWBERRIES 55 



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 cov- 

 erlid 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 house- 

 hold, 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 perfume. 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, fine-grained expression. Some berries 

 shine, the Downer glows as if there were a red bloom 

 upon it. Its core is firm and white, its skin thin 



