CHAPTER VI 

 THE CHERRY {Prunus cerasus: P- avium) 



THE common garden cherry, (Amygdalacece) the type 

 of daintily gay, merrily modest beauty, of an in- 

 spiring, sweet tartness in flavour and of graceful decision 

 of form, is of the brave blitheness of hue generally first 

 noticed by children, which fact, and this alone, is evidently 

 answerable for the nursery song of "Cherries are ripe! 

 Cherries are ripe! Give the baby some" — since, though 

 so attractive, cherries are very nearly the most unfit of 

 all fruits for babies to eat ! They have appealed to human- 

 ity from time immemorial, from the subtly fragrant 

 blossoms of far Japan which have influenced art itself, to 

 the gayly dangling red clusters of fruit which have always 

 tempted the appetite of small boys of the Occident. The 

 cherry pie has long since been commemorated in the 

 rhyme of the "charming Billy Boy," whose sweetheart 

 could "make a cherry pie quick as you can wink your eye," 

 while a recent coating of immortality has been applied by 

 the present generation in "Cheer up: cherries are ripe!" 

 And cherries have the actual material or physical element 

 and power of cheering up certain kinds of depression, 

 for, aside from from their unvarying cheerfulness of front 

 which might well have a mental effect, this little fruit is 

 considered almost a cure for some forms of bladder and 

 kidney troubles and its "red badge of courage" is also the 

 symbol of the remarkable tonic properties of the tree whose 

 bark has become famous on the continent of North America 

 as "bitters" and phosphates, etc. These bracing decoc- 



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