JUNE 



13 



The wild strawberry, like the wild apple, is spicy 

 and high-flavored, but, unlike the apple, it is also 

 mild and delicious. It has the true rustic sweet- 

 ness and piquancy. What it lacks in size, when 

 compared with the garden berry, it makes up in 

 intensity. It is never dropsical or overgrown, 

 but firm-fleshed and hardy. Its great enemies 

 are the plow, gypsum, and the horserake. It dis- 

 likes a limestone soil, but seems to prefer the de- 

 tritus of the stratified rock. Where the sugar 

 maple abounds, I have always found plenty of 

 wild strawberries. 



BURROUGHS : Locusts and Wild Honey. 



14 



The verdure, both of trees and grass, is now in 

 its prime, the leaves elastic, all life. The grass- 

 fields are plenteously bestrewn with white-weed, 

 large spaces looking as white as a sheet of snow, 

 at a distance, yet with an indescribable warmer 

 tinge than snow, living white, intermixed with 

 living green. The hills and hollows beyond the 

 Cold Spring copiously shaded, principally with 

 oaks of good growth, and some walnut-trees, with 

 the rich sun brightening in the midst of the open 

 spaces, and mellowing and fading into the shade, 

 and single trees, with their cool spot of shade, in 

 the waste of sun : quite a picture of beauty, gently 

 picturesque. 



HAWTHORNE : American Note-Books. 



