WILD FRUITS 45 



connect it in some manner with the " Theve-thorn," a 

 word which occurs in Wycliffe's Bible, as the rendering 

 of rhamnuSj in the story of Jotham's parable of the 

 Trees. It is not known what species of bramble 

 Wycliffe meant by the " Theve-thorn " ; but monkish 

 commentators, doubtless following some ecclesiastical 

 tradition, understood the rhamnus to be the dewberry. 

 The wild raspberry, the origin of our garden varieties, 

 is common enough in woods, especially in the north 

 of England. This plant is commonly called " hind- 

 berry" by the early botanists; and it is curious to 

 notice that Gerarde remarks that the fruit is " in taste 

 not very pleasant." Such, however, was not his 

 opinion of the strawberry. As old Izaak Walton 

 happily says, quoting one Dr. Boteler, " Doubtless God 

 could have made a better berry, but doubtless God 

 never did." And the strawberry of those days seems 

 to have been only the wild strawberry of the woods, 

 probably improved by cultivation. It flourished, as 

 we know from Shakespeare, in the Bishop of Ely's 

 garden at Holborn, which was equally celebrated for 

 its roses and its saffron crocuses. "Wife," says 

 Thomas Tusser, the homely farmer-poet of Suffolk, in 

 the sixteenth century 



" Wife, into thy garden, and set me a plot 

 With Strawberry rootes of the best to be got : 

 Such growing abroade, among Thornes in the wood, 

 Wei chosen and picked, prove excellent good." 



And even in the next century, as Mr. Ellacombe 

 reminds us, Sir Hugh Plat, in his Garden of Eden, 

 says : " Strawberries which grow in woods prosper 

 best in gardens." And these wild strawberries, so 

 abundant in shady places throughout England, and 



