SMALLER BERRIES. 277 



Scottish horticulturists have tried to raise it from the 

 seed, and have, we believe, obtained plants; though 

 the fruit, when they bore any, has been tasteless, 

 and the plants themselves are preserved alive 

 with difficulty. The Arctic berry, which grows in 

 the wildest and most exposed districts of Lapland, 

 sometimes offered to Linnaeus the only food which he 

 found in his perilous journey in those dreary re- 

 gions; and he thus speaks of it with much feeling: 

 " I should be ungrateful towards this beneficent 

 plant, which often, when 1 was almost prostrate with 

 hunger and fatigue, restored me with the vinous 

 nectar of its berries, did I not bestow on it a full 

 description."'* 



THE CLOUD-BERKY Robus chamcemorus. 



This is another mountainous berry, which it is ex- 

 ceedingly difficult to cultivate. A single berry grows 

 on the top of the stem. These berries are much 

 more numerous than the former, though, like them, 

 they are found only in very elevated and exposed 

 situations on the sides of the loftiest mountains in 

 Scotland. The berries are about the size of small 

 strawberries, and the flavour is exceedingly fine, su- 

 perior to that of any of the strawberries, as found 

 wild in this country, and having a sharpness which 

 does not belong even to the best of those which are 

 cultivated. They remain in season for about a month ; 

 and, during that time, the Highlanders, in the dis- 

 tricts where they are found, (for they are by no means 

 generally diffused over the Highlands,) collect them 

 in considerable quantities, and make them into excel- 

 lent preserves. In the east, as well as the north, the 

 wild berries of the mountains and vallies, which na- 

 ture offers in such abundance for a short season, are 

 thus used by man: 



* Flora Lapponica. 

 VOL. II. 6* 



