WILD FRUITS. 
143 
varieties marked by our botanists are both found about our 
lake. 
This wild harvest of fruit, a blessing to all, is an especial ad- 
vantage to the poor ; from the first strawberries in June, there is 
a constant succession until the middle of September. In a week 
or two we shall have raspberries : both the red and the black 
varieties are very abundant, and remarkably good. Then come 
the blackberries — plenty here as in the neighborhood of Falstaff ; 
the running kind, or vine-blackberry, bearing the finest fruit of all 
its tribe, and growing abundantly on Long Island and in West- 
chester, is not, however, found in our hills. Whortleberries 
abound in our woods, and on every waste hill-side. Wild goose- 
berries are common, and last summer we met a man with a pail 
of them, which he was carrying to the village for sale. Wild 
plums are also common, and frequently brought to market. The 
large purple flower of the rose-raspberry yields a fruit of a beau- 
tiful color and pleasant, acid taste, but it is seldom eaten in quan- 
tities. Wild grape-vines are very common, and formerly the fruit 
used to be gathered for sale, but of late years we have not seen 
any. All these lesser kinds of Avild fruits, strawberries, raspberries, 
blackberries, and whortleberries, are gathered, to a very great 
extent, for sale ; women, children, and occasionally men also, find 
it a profitable employment to bring them to market ; an industri- 
ous woman has made in this way, during the fruit season, thirty 
dollars, without neglecting her family, and we have known an old 
man who made forty dollars in one summer ; children also, if 
well disposed, can easily support themselves by the same means. 
Strawberries sell in the village at a shilling a quart ; blackberries 
