February Berries 
the bushes at all are more or less discolored to an apoplec¬ 
tic purple or a lifeless brown. 
All about our feet as we skirt the border of the swamp 
are pigmy plants of wintergreen, fruitful with the familiar 
red, spicy berries, which we like to buy at a cent or two a 
glass from the Italian fruit venders on the city streets. 
It is almost worth a half-day’s trip to see these berry-laden 
bushes, two or three inches high, which are the embodi¬ 
ment of sturdy endurance. The cold empurples their 
foliage as it reddens a man’s skin, but they do not yield a 
leaf to its blustering. 
Picking our way from hummock to hummock over the 
treacherous ice of the swamp, we come upon other berry 
treasures—the witherod’s bunches of plum-purple fruit, 
the exact color of Concord grapes. The berries are 
shriveled now, like raisins, but, unlike raisins, are void 
of meat or taste; yet their rich color is a feast to the eye. 
Here, too, are the fragrant bushes of the bayberry, on 
some of which we shall find the little white waxy balls 
which old-time folk used to boil for the sake of a tallow¬ 
like extract so obtained, and which is a less resourceful 
age than this, was serviceable in candle making. Clamber¬ 
ing over high bushes and clinging to the lower limbs of 
trees are vines of smilax—not the miscalled smilax of the 
florist shops, but the honest, simon-pure smilax of Father 
Linnaeus. The neighborhood of some of our swamps will 
yield three or four varieties of it. Usually they bear 
clusters of black or blue-black berries which persist nearly 
until spring, but are inedible from a human standpoint. 
There is one of our species, however, whose berries are a 
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