The Thorn (Black). 



angry weather, just at the time that this hardy little tree 

 is in bloom. The country people call it the Black Thorn 

 winter; and thus it has been called, I dare say, by all the 

 inhabitants of this island, from generation to generation, for 

 a thousand years. 



509. This Thorn is as hardy as the White Thorn ; its 

 thorns are sharper and longer ; it grows as fast ; its wood 

 is a great deal harder and more tough ; it throws out a 

 great deal more in side-shoots 5 and it is, in every respect, 

 better than the Hawthorn for the making of a Hedge. If 

 I be asked, how it has happened, then, that the Hawthorn 

 is constantly used for this purpose, and the Black Thorn 

 never, or scarcely ever, I answer, that the reason is very 

 clear ; namely, that a sack of the seed of the Hawthorn 

 may, almost anywhere, be got for a shilling or half a crown 

 at the most ; and that, to get a number of Black Thorn 

 sloes, equal in number to the Hawthorn berries contained 

 in a sack, would, in almost any part of the kingdom, cost 

 live, ten, nay twenty pounds. 



510. The sloe is very large compared with the size of 

 the Hawthorn berry ; you must get six sacks perhaps of 

 the sloes to have a number equal to the berries contained 

 in one sack 5 and six sacks of sices, except in very woody 

 countries, would not be found perhaps in the half of a 

 w^hole county. The tree, like other plums, is liable to 

 blight. It seldom bears any considerable crop, and very 

 frequently bears no fruit at all. It grows no where except 

 in hedge-rows and coppices : in the former it is too much 

 exposed to bear much fruit ; and in the latter, it is too 

 much in the shade to bear any fruit at all. Hence it is, 

 that, though all of us who have been born and bred in the 

 country know that the Black Thorn is by far the best of 



