It is peculiarly deserving of remark concerning this tree, that it grows better near the sea than in any other situation, and that plantations of sycamores may be so made as even to defend the herbage of the adjacent country from the spray, and consequently from the injurious effects of the sea. Its growth is quick, yet it will increase in size until it is two hundred years old. The soil in which it best flourishes is a loose black earth. The only inconveniences attending it in plantations is the early shedding of its leaves.
In the spring of the year the inhabitants of some parts of Scotland bore holes through the bark of the sycamore, at the distance of about twelve inches from the root, and suffer the juice to drain into vessels, to the amount of eight or nine quarts a day from each tree. This liquor they convert into a kind of wine; and, if the watery part were evaporated, a useful sugar might be obtained from it.
The wood of the sycamore is soft and white, and was formerly much in request by turners, for making trenchers, dishes, bowls, and other articles; but, since the general introduction of earthen-ware for all these purposes, its value has greatly decreased.
123. CRANBERRIES are a small red fruit with purple dots, produced by a slender wiry plant (Vaccinium oxycoccos), which grows in the peaty bogs of several parts of the north of England, and also in Norfolk, Lincolnshire, and Cambridgeshire.
The leaves are small, somewhat oval, and rolled back at the edges, and the stem is thread-shaped and trailing. The blossoms are small, but beautiful, each consisting of four distinct petals rolled back to the base, and of deep flesh colour.
The collecting of cranberries is a tiresome and disagreeable employment, as each berry, which seldom exceeds the size of a pea, grows on a separate stalk, and the morasses in which they grow are frequently very deep. Cranberries are much used in the northern counties, and great quantities of them are bottled and sent to London. So considerable a traffic in this fruit is carried on, that, at Longtown in Cumberland, the amount of a market day's sale, during the season for gathering it, is stated by Dr. Withering to be from 20l. to 30l. Cranberries begin to ripen about the month of August, and continue in perfection for some weeks.
They are much used in confectionary, but particularly in tarts; their rich flavour being very generally esteemed. The usual mode of preserving them is in dry bottles, corked so closely as to exclude 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 cranberries, mixed with a certain portion of sugar, and properly 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 belonging to the cranberry tribe, which grow wild in this country, on heaths or in woods. These are BILBERRIES, or BLEA-BERRIES (Vaccinium 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 idæa), which, though not of very grateful flavour, are occasionally used in tarts, rob, and jelly.
125. The COMMON HEATH, or LING (Erica vulgaris), is a well-known plant, with numerous small rose-coloured flowers, which grows wild on heaths and mountainous wastes, in nearly every part of England.