THE BLACKBERRY AND THE DEWBERRY— continued. 
or for fixing the newly-laid turf on graves. Those species that root at their tips 
form the ingenious “ rolling fence ” of the squatter, who, cutting away the^ older 
growth on his side of the boundary, annually extends his enclosure. The whole 
plant is astringent, the green shoots yielding a black dye, or making with honey a 
useful gargle. The fruit has been used to colour wines, and is now largely collected 
in this country for use in tarts or as jam, though a popular prejudice against the 
plant as the supposed material of the Crown of Thorns makes the peasantry of 
Northern France refuse to touch it. 
Waterton tells an amusing legend of the Bramble. 
‘*The cormorant,** he says, *‘was once a wool merchant. He entered into partnership with the bramble and the bat, and 
they freighted a large ship with wool : she was wrecked, and the firm became bankrupt. Since that disaster, the bat skulks 
about till midnight to avoid his creditors, the cormorant is for ever diving into the deep to discover its foundered vessel, while 
the bramble seizes hold of every passing sheep to make up his loss by stealing the wool.** 
Mr. Rogers’s fourteenth group, the C<Bsii, termed Corylifolii, i.e. hazel-leaved, by 
Dr. Focke, are low-growing, arching, or trailing plants, with roundish or slightly 
angular stems with many rooting branches, a mealy surface, and scattered, straight, 
slender, needle-like prickles. Their leaflets are broad and almost sessile, their 
flowers have large roundish petals, and the drupels are generally few and large. 
The Dewberry {Rubus ccBsius Linne) is a variable, but easily recognised, species, 
found chiefly on calcareous and clayey soils and in damp places, often in dense shade. 
Its round, low-arching, or prostrate stem is very glaucous : its leaves are almost 
always ternate with thin, irregularly-lobed and toothed leaflets : its flowers are few 
in a cluster but large and white, with felted, long-pointed sepals ; and the few 
drupels are glaucous and acid. 
It is the Ronce bleudtre of the French and has been identified as the Thevethorn of 
WycliP s Bible, where, in Jotham’s fable in the Book of Judges, the Vulgate 
Rhamnus is translated Bramble in the Authorised Version. Matthiolus quotes some 
monastic commentators who, following probably a traditional interpretation, describe 
the plant in question as “ a certain bramble which, prostrate on the ground, and 
growing in uncultivated places, bears berries of a blue rather than of a black colour.” 
The word Theve is supposed to signify lowliness. 
