BED OR REDDISH PURPLE 123 



Eight hundred thousand bushels are estimated 

 to represent a year's production of cultivated 

 Cranberries. The wild Cranberries are also 

 marketed. 



One plantation employs a thousand pickers, 

 who camp in tents or cabins during the harvest- 

 ing. Bailey thus describes the pleasures of the 

 workers : " This picking time is a sort of a long 

 and happy picnic — all the happier for being a 

 busy one. The pickers look forward to it from 

 year to year. They are invigorated by the 

 change and the novelty, and they must come 

 near to nature in the sweet and mellow October 

 days. Those of our readers who have cast their 

 lot with hop-pickers, or who have camped in the 

 clearings in blackberry time, or who have 

 joined in the excursions to huckleberry swamps, 

 can know something of the cranberry picker's 

 experiences. Yet I fancy that one must actually 

 pick the cranberries in the drowsy Indian sum- 

 mer to know fully what cranberry picking is 

 like." — Evolution of our Native Fruits. 



