Our viands

Yet they are still grown largely in the immediate neighbourhood of London, and a feast of straw- berries freshly picked may even now be eaten with cream and sugar in many gardens in the suburbs ; but to those accustomed to the smoke and dirt of this great Metropolis it seems impossible that strawberries could ever have been grown in Holborn, yet Shakespeare repeats an historic fact when he makes Glo'ster say to the Bishop of Ely — ' My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn I saw good strawberries in your garden there.' Ely Place, the site of the Bishop's palace and garden, may now be searched in vain for any fruit, except such as is brought there in baskets from Covent Garden. There is now an endless variety both of strawberries and raspberries cultivated, but whilst in the latter the flavour is improved as the size is increased, in the strawberry the very large berries are seldom equal in flavour to those of medium 202 OUR VIANDS size. Both these fruits are also much esteemed in their wild state, and, strange to say, the wild raspberry becomes more luscious and more highly flavoured, the farther north it is found, forming the most delicious of fruits in Norway and Sweden; whilst the wild strawberry is an indispensable ad- junct to the dinner table in Alpine countries, as all travellers know, for heaped-up dishes of strawberries appear daily at every hotel and restaurant in Switzerland and Northern Italy during the season, till one is constrained to wonder at the abundance of the fruit, and the patient industry of the gatherers, who must wander over miles of mountainous country to supply innumerable voracious travellers daily with this never-failing luxury. There are numerous other wild berries, which have their use in due season, although not so universally esteemed as the strawberry and the raspberry. In mountainous districts the bilberry — a little black berry — growing abundantly on low bushes, is excellent for pies and puddings, whilst the cranberry — which is of the same family, but red — is not only used when fresh and ripe, but is im- ported in barrels from Norway and Russia, and a larger kind, though not so juicy, from America, to the extent of many thousands of gallons annually. The blackberry, which is the fruit of the bramble, comes into the market at a season when fruit is scarce, otherwise it would hardly hold a high place in public favour; but, mixed with apple, it makes excellent puddings and pies, and blackberry jam and jelly are highly esteemed by many. The fruit of one species of bramble which grows in the extreme north is highly lauded by Linnaeus ; and the cloudberry is also a great boon to dwellers in the cold and barren regions of Northern Scandinavia and Lapland, even to the North Cape. STONE FRUITS AND BERRIES 203