Page:Natural history of the farm.djvu/22

small and seedy kinds, that have been hardy enough to hold their own, in spite of mowing and grazing and clearing. They compare poorly with the selected and cultivated products of the fruit farm. Yet many of them once served our ancestors for food. Collectively they were the sole fruit supply of the aboriginal inhabitants of our country. The Indians ate them raw, stewed them, made jam, and even jellies. They dried the wild strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries, and kept them for winter use. They expressed the juice of the elderberry for a beverage: indeed, the black-berried elder they used in many ways; it was one of their favorite fruits. And even as the crows eat sumach berries in the winter when better fruits are scarce, so the Indians boiled them to make a winter beverage.

The cultivated fruits are but a few of those that nature has offered us. We have chosen these few on account of their size, their quality, and their productiveness. We demand them in quantity, hence they must either be large or else be easily gathered. Some, like the Juneberry, are sweet and palatable, but too small and scattered and hard to pick. The wild gooseberry is a rich and luscious fruit, but needs shearing before it can be handled. The quantitative demands of our appetite, the qualitative demands of our palate and the mechanical limitations of our fingers have restricted us to a few, and having learned how to successfully manage these few, we have neglected all the others for them.

Our management has consisted, in the main, of propagating from the best varieties that nature offered, and giving culture. Any of the wild fruits would probably yield improved varieties under like treatment. All the wild fruits show natural

Fig. 3. The Wild Gooseberry.