The Thorn (Black). 



506. Every one knows that this is a Thorn of the Plum 

 kind; that it bears very small black plums, which are 

 called Sloes, which have served love-song poets, in all ages, 

 with a simile whereby to describe the eyes of their beauties, 

 as the snow has constantly served them wfth the means 

 of attempting to do something like justice to the colour 

 of their skins and the purity of their minds, and as the 

 rose, has served to assist them in a description of the 

 colour of their cheeks. 



507. These beauty-describing sloes, have a little plum- 

 like pulp, which covers a little roundish stone, pretty 

 narly as hard as iron, with a small kernel in the inside of it. 

 This pulp, which I have eaten many times when I was a 

 boy until my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth and 

 my lips were pretty nearly glued together, is astringent 

 beyond the powers of alum. The juice expressed from 

 this pulp, is of a greenish black, and, mixed with water, in 

 which a due proportion of logwood has been steeped, 

 receiving, in addition, a sufficient proportion of cheap 

 French brandy, makes the finest Port wine in the world, 

 makes the whiskered bucks, while they are picking their 

 teeth after dinner, smack their lips, observing that the wine 

 is beautifully rough, and that they like " a dry wine that 

 has a good ' body,' " 



508. It is not, however, as a fruit-tree thut I am here 

 about to speak seriously to sensible people : it is of a bush, 

 excellent for the making of hedges, and not less excellent 

 for the making of walking sticks and swingles of flails. 

 The Black Thorn blovv^s very early in the spring. It is a 

 Plum, and it blows at the same time, or a very little earlier, 

 than the Plums. It is a remarkable fact, that there is 

 always, that is every year of our lives, a spell of cold and 



