176 OUR ROCK-GARDEN 



banyan-like growth there seems no apparent reason 

 why, given time and wall-space, these sixty feet 

 should not presently become sixty miles. It is 

 neither more nor less than a common wild black- 

 berry, but having a southern aspect, and being en- 

 tirely unmolested by impatient youngsters x the fruit 

 ripens to perfection. While we have no hesita- 

 tion in declaring our plant the common blackberry, 

 we must not forget that there has latterly arisen 

 a section of botanical students who have turned 

 their keen analysis with such vigour on the plant 

 we once all recognised as Rubus fruticosus, that 

 while some tell us there are ten really differing 

 species, one enthusiast we see goes so far as to 

 discriminate forty-eight, all duly marked and 

 named, while one of our greatest authorities, a 

 neighbour of ours, tells us that this has now 

 grown to over a hundred ! Our plant is depicted 

 in Plate XIX. It has this year yielded us 

 nearly eighty pounds of delicious fruit. 



chips into the left hand, and sing three times the Miserere 

 and nine times the Pater noster. Then take mugwort and 

 everlasting : boil these three, the worts and the chips, in 

 milk, then let the man sip fasting and at night a good dish 

 full some while before he taketh other meat." ANGLO- 

 SAXON MS., Brit. Mus., about 1040. 



1 A clergyman of our acquaintance having escorted a large 

 number of children to Epping Forest, found one of his boys, 

 in the absence of ripe fruit, getting the berries while still quite 

 red, but on remonstrating with him on the uselessness of the 



