404 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
berry on account of its numerous, stony seeds. ‘They are par- 
ticularly suited to be preserved by drying, and, when prepared 
in that way, are equal in value to the imported currants, as an 
ingredient in cakes and puddings. 
There is a variety of this whortleberry growing in the same 
situations and forming like it large beds, distinguished by its 
leaves of a darker green and shining black berries. 
This lowest and earliest of the blueberries delights in a thin, 
sandy soil, and carpets the ground in the openings in the pitch 
pine woods, with beds of rich, soft green, which in May and 
June are decked with a profusion of beautiful flowers; in July 
and August are loaded with delicious fruit, and in October turn 
toa deep scarlet and crimson. Its rich, tender fruit feeds im- 
mense flocks of wild pigeons and numberless other animals. It 
is a pecular blessing to the arid and otherwise barren, sandy 
plains, and helps the poor inhabitants, especially in seasons of 
scarcity, to eke out their bread-corn, to which it makes a whole- 
some and most agreeable addition. 
Sp. 8. Tse Cowzerry. V. vitisidea. L. 
This plant, so far as I know, occurs in only one spot in Mas- 
sachusetts, which is in a pasture in Danvers, where it was 
found by Mr. Oakes in 1820, or before. It has some resemblance 
to the cranberry, but the leaves are larger and the branches 
larger and shorter. It has a creeping, woody root, with as- 
cending angular branches a foot or more long. The leaves are 
coriaceous and shining, like those of box, but darker. The 
flowers are pale pink, four-cleft and with eight stamens. The 
berries are blood-red, acid and austere. In the north of Eu- 
rope, where it abounds, it is used as the cranberry, but is infe- 
rior; formed into a jelly, it 1s thought superior to currant jelly, 
as a sauce for venison or roast beef, or as a remedy for colds 
and sore throats. 
