STUDIES OF PLANT LIFE 
SwAMp BLUEBERRY—Vaccinium corymbosum (L.). 
This is a large handsome shrub, from five to eight feet high, 
found in many varieties growing in swamps. The corolla is 
larger than either of the above and of a purer white. The 
leaves are ovate and entire, and slightly pubescent. The rich 
berries begin to ripen in August, and are the latest of the 
season. 
These pretty shrubs, laden with their luscious berries, may 
be found on all dry open places. The poor Indian squaw 
fills her bark baskets with the fruit and brings them to the vil- 
lages to trade for flour, tea, and calico, while social parties of 
the settlers used to go forth annually to gather the fruit for 
preserving, or for the pleasure of spending a long summer’s 
day among the romantic hills and valleys, roaming in un- 
restrained freedom among the wild flowers scattered in such 
rich profusion over those open tracts of land where these 
useful berries grow. These rural parties would sometimes 
muster to the extent of fifty or even an hundred individuals, 
furnished with provisions and all the appliances for an 
extended picnic. 
Many years ago, when the beautiful Rice Lake plains lay 
an uncultivated wilderness of wild fruits and flowers, shaded 
by noble, wide-spreading oaks, silver birches and feathery 
pines, an event occurred that excited great interest in the 
neighborhood and for miles around, the excitement even 
penetrating to distant settlements on the Otonabee, then the 
border-land of civilization north of the Great Lakes. 
It was in the month of July, 1837, that a large party of 
friends and neighbors near Port Hope agreed to make a 
picnic party to gather huckleberries and pass a pleasant 
summer day on the Rice Lake plains. They made a large 
gathering in waggons and buggies and on horseback. Among 
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