COMMON HEATH. 113 
nerally esteemed. The usual mode of preserving 
them is in dry bottles, corked so closely as to ex- 
clude all access of the external air : some persons, 
however, fill up the bottles with spring water. Others 
prepare this fruit with sugar. From the juice of cran- 
berries, mixed with a certain portion of sugar, and pro- 
perly fermented, a grateful and wholesome wine may 
be made. The inhabitants of Sweden use this fruit 
only for the cleaning of silver plate. 
A considerable quantity of cranberries is annually 
imported, into this country, from North America and 
Russia. These are larger than our own, of a different 
species, and by no means of so pleasant flavour. 
124. There are three other species of fruit belong- 
ing to the cranberry tribe, which grow wild in this 
country, on heaths or in woods. These are BILBER- 
HIES, or BLEA-BERRIES ( Vctccinium myrtillus}, which 
are occasionally eaten in milk, and in tarts, and which 
afford a violet-coloured dye: GREAT BILBERRIES (V. 
uliginosum), which, in France, are sometimes employed 
to tinge white wines red: and RED WHORTLE-BERRIES 
(V. vitis idcea), which, though not of very grateful fla- 
vour, are occasionally used in tarts, rob, and jelly. 
125. The COMMON HE A TH,or LING (Erica vulgaris), 
is a well-known plant, with numerous small rose-coloured flozcers^ 
which grows wild on heaths and mountainous wastes, in nearly 
every part of England. 
The principal use to which the heath is applied is for 
making brooms or besoms. It is likewise bound into 
fagots, and employed as fuel, particularly for ovens; 
and is, not unfrequently, employed in the filling up of 
drains, and the morassy parts of roads, previously to 
their being covered with earth, stones, and other durable 
materials. In the Highlands of Scotland, the poorer 
inhabitants make walls, for their cottages, with alternate 
layers of heath and a kind of mortar made of black 
earth and straw: they likewise thatch their cabins with 
it, and make their beds of it. The inhabitants of Islay, 
