FRUITFUL HEDGEROWS 125 



absence of fresh vegetables and garden fruits. It belongs, 

 however, rather to late summer than to autumn, like the 

 dewberry of English hedges and river- banks, which is an 

 earlier, softer, and scarcer blackberry, covered with a bloom 

 like a sloe. But in the far north the autumn snowfall pre- 

 serves even the softer berries, like the cloudberry and 

 cranberry, fresh and undecayed till spring ; and they form 

 a valuable food for many kinds of birds when the next year's 

 thaw releases them from this natural cold storage. 



