s extract a syrup from the
sap, from which they make a spirituous liquor. In London they make
champagne of it. The most virtuous uses to which it is applied are
brooms and wooden shoes."--_A Tour Round My Garden_, Letter xix.

BITTER-SWEET, _see_ APPLE (22).

BLACKBERRIES.

(1) _Falstaff._

Give you a reason on compulsion!--if reasons were as plentiful
as Blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon
compulsion, I.[37:1]

_1st Henry IV_, act ii, sc. 4 (263).

(2) _Falstaff._

Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher and eat
Blackberries?

_Ibid._ (450).

(3) _Thersites._

That same dog-fox Ulysses is not proved worth a Blackberry.

_Troilus and Cressida_, act v, sc. 4 (12).

(4) _Rosalind._

There is a man . . . . hangs odes upon Hawthorns and elegies
on Brambles.

_As You Like it_, act iii, sc. 2 (379).

(5)

The thorny Brambles and embracing bushes,
As fearful of him, part, through whom he rushes.

_Venus and Adonis_ (629).

I here join together the tree and the fruit, the Bramble (_Rubus
fruticosus_) and the Blackberry. There is not much to be said for a
plant that is the proverbial type of a barren country or untidy
cultivation, yet the Bramble and the Blackberry have their charms, and
we could ill afford to lose them from our hedgerows. The name Bramble
originally meant anything thorny, and Chaucer applied it to the Dog
Rose--

"He was chaste and no lechour,
And sweet as is the Bramble flower
That bereth the red hepe."

But in Shakespeare's time it was evidently confined to the
Blackberry-bearing Bramble.

There is a quaint legend of the origin of the plant which is worth
repeating. It is thus pleasantly told by Waterton: "The cormorant was
once a wool merchant. He entered into partnership with the Bramble and
the bat, and they freighted a large ship with wool; she was wrecked, and
the firm became bankrupt. Since that disaster the bat skulks about till
midnight to avoid his creditors, the cormorant is for ever diving into
the deep to discover its foundered vessel, while the Bramble seizes
hold of every passing sheep to make up his loss by stealing the wool."

As a garden plant, the common