216 FRUIT-GROWING 



the wild forms of the woods although there is 

 a European raspberry of the red type. In this 

 country it has not shown itself the equal of the 

 varieties we have originated from our own 

 stock. In Michigan and other Northern States 

 there are thousands of acres of burned over 

 land more or less covered with wild red rasp- 

 berry bushes. Some seasons these yield tre- 

 mendous quantities of fruit which is used 

 locally and to a certain extent shipped to 

 market. These wild berries are the equal in 

 flavor of any cultivated sorts and some, with 

 the mark of romance upon their brows, will 

 claim that they are even of better flavor. 

 Doubtless this claim is due to the fact that the 

 fruit had been eaten when it was served with 

 that sauce of the out-of-doors — Michigan air. 



Cultivated berries excel their wild progen- 

 itors chiefly in being more productive. One 

 would need but a small patch of carefully 

 tended, cultivated berries to enable him to har- 

 vest as much fruit as might be gathered from 

 some acres of wild bushes. I own a wee island 

 of a few acres in the west end of Lake Huron 

 to which I retreat during the hay-fever season. 

 It is called "Raspberry Island" because of the 

 supposed abundance of that fruit which grows 

 there, and yet I imagine that it produces fewer 

 berries than one could grow on a well tended 

 patch twenty feet square planted on good soil. 



