224 BUSH-FRUITS 



much more needed. As time went on, however, this gratuitous 

 feast of nature, provided for the fostering of " infant industries," 

 began to diminish, and the demand of growing cities for increased 

 quantities of fruit doubtless led to the idea of cultivating the 

 blackberry among the rest. Just when this state of affairs was 

 reached it is impossible to say, but evidently not until quite late 

 in our national development, for the blackberry does not seem to 

 have begun to receive much notice or to be talked about in the 

 horticultural journals until about 1850. From Hovey's Magazine of 

 Horticulture, it appears that Capt. Josiah Lovett, of Beverly, 

 Mass., figured prominently in introducing it to cultivation. Even 

 then, as with many other good and useful things, first impressions 

 were unfavorable. Of course, the first effort would naturally be 

 to bring plants, which bore the most promising fruit, from the 

 woods and clearings and set them in the garden. This attempt to 

 tame the wild proteg6 of the forest did not often prove satisfac- 

 tory. These plants evidently did not take kindly to the refine- 

 ments of civilization, and longed for their free and easy life of 

 the wood. Capt. Lovett reports repeated failures in trying to get 

 good berries by this method. He persevered for five years, but 

 at last gave up in despair about 1840, and surrendered this wild 

 gypsy of the fruits to its native haunts as untamable. In spite 

 of these discouraging results he evidently did not abandon the 

 dream of a cultivated blackberry, for Downing gives him the 

 credit of having introduced the Dorchester, which in time proved 

 so valuable, although according to Marshall P. Wilder, as re- 

 ported in the "Transactions of the Massachusetts Horticultural 

 Society" for 1883, p. 129, it was brought to notice by Eliphalet 

 Thayer, who first exhibited it before that society, August 7, 1841. 

 But these first introductions to cultivation, the Dorchester and 

 Lawton, were not calculated to bring swift and lasting popularity 

 to the blackberry as a garden fruit, for although large and attrac- 

 tive, their habit of turning black before they are ripe nearly 

 always led to their being gathered and eaten while green, and 

 their consequent condemnation as sour and poor in quality. 

 Moreover, their culture, being little understood, led to frequent 

 failures and unsatisfactory results, while their propensity to per- 



