362 Bush-Fruits 



would be more useful if all huckleberries were black and 

 all blueberries blue. But the dangleberry, Gaylussacia 

 frondosa is as much a blueberry in point of color as any 

 of the others. Yet it belongs to the group known as 

 huckleberries in New England. 



In this discussion the word huckleberry may be taken 

 in its broader meaning, as a general term covering all 

 fruits of the group. The word blueberry will be used 

 for fruits or plants of the genus Vaccinium. 



The huckleberries belong to the heath family, or Eri- 

 cacese, which includes a great many delightful wild wood 

 plants, such as the wintergreen, the trailing arbutus, the 

 heather, the mountain laurel, and the rhododendrons. 

 In spite of the beauty and attractive graces displayed by 

 so many of these plants, they belong to a modest and 

 retiring family. They seldom mingle among the crowds 

 of the open country, but withdraw to the quiet, shaded 

 nooks of moist woods and mossy swamps, or climb to bare 

 and rocky heights, where the solitude is even more im- 

 pressive. So marked is this inherent shyness that most 

 members of the family do not take kindly to cultivation. 

 They pine for their woodland glens or rocky crags, no 

 matter how tender the care bestowed upon them. Hence 

 it happens that the huckleberries, though among the 

 finest of fruits, and among the most important in the wild 

 state, have been little known in cultivation up to the 

 present time. 



Several causes have prevented them from receiving 

 more attention. In the first place, the fruit grows wild 

 in abundance over large portions of the country. Added 

 to this has been the uncertainty of success in transplant- 



