Wild Strawberries
I feel that no apology is necessary in calling attention once more to the virtues of the wild strawberry. It is the earliest and most epicurean of English wild fruits; its relation to the blackberry is roughly that of the Cox's Orange to the crab-apple. This year, on the sun-baked chalk slopes of the south country, it has already ripened prodigiously: making a scarlet groundwork, in some places, for rarer orchis. As a dessert it equals the famous fraises des boil, which visitors to France cherish as a special memory, and the slight sharpness of its flavour makes a jam of more dis- tinguished quality than the cultivated fruit. In short, a free luxury. Yet it is rarely seen in shops, in country markets or on the menus offering so-called farmhouse teas. And country people, with characteristic apathy, ignore it almost completely.
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