130 THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



among the audience at pleasure any perfume or any combination of 

 perfumes which his or her taste might suggest, to be succeeded by 

 other combinations in like manner, as the different chords in music 

 follow each other to produce harmony and melody. 



I do not at the present time intend to suggest anything quite so 

 complicated for the gratification of our organs of taste; indeed, it would 

 be rather a comical spectacle to see a whole audience with their 

 mouths open, like a nest of young birds, waiting to be filled with some 

 combined extract of the different kinds of berries, but I will tell my 

 readers how they can for themselves pick and eat to their satisfaction, 

 or mix up a dish of strawberries that shall leave nothing to be desired. 



In the first place allow five or six berries on each plant to ripen 

 before any are picked, and if you wish to eat them from hand to mouth, 

 take all the ripe berries from one plant and eat them together, and 

 the acidity of the underripe will be corrected and improved by the 

 sweetness of the older berries, and you will be sure of a luscious 

 mouthful. Gather in the same way ad libitum for a dish, and you 

 will have one whose delicious qualities it will be hard to beat. It is 

 not expected that you will eat six berries at one mouthful should 

 they attain the size of the Sharpless, as represented in the July 

 number of the Horticulturist. When I made this discovery I was 

 cutting down the weeds from between the rov/s of a new plantation 

 with a wheel-hoe. These plants had not been picked over for market, 

 and therefore the berries were in all stages of ripeness ; and when I 

 learned what a rich treat each plant v/as capable of affording me, I am 

 afraid the wheel-hoe made more stoppages than was necessary. I 

 found it easy to persuade myself, however, that pushing that implement 

 through those overgrown weeds was too hard work to be continuous, 

 and that nature, as represented in the person of the writer, required 

 rest ; and with_ those delicious clusters waiting to be plucked, 



I could not bear to pass them by with co]d, unfeeling stare ; 



I could not bear to leave tliem, for I knew how sweet they were. 



But what about the healthfulness of fruit ? Here I must say I 

 have hitherto been somewhat undecided, from the fact that I have 

 found some kinds, apples particularly, to disagree with me. I there- 

 fore could not enter into a wholesale eulogium of its virtues as others 

 have done, but have contented myself with supposing that my case is 

 an exception to the general rule, and that to the great majority it is 



