The summer amusements are agreeable in the country, and are enjoyed with greater zest on account of the long dreary winter and the weariness induced by continually gazing on snowy plains during the previous six months. No sooner has the ice disappeared than summer commences; the ground quickly becomes covered with verdure, the trees with foliage, and numberless lilies of the valley and buttercups (but no pink-edged daisies, alas!) are to be seen intermixed with what we call Canterbury-bells and various other wild flowers: even the dog-rose is often met with. There are no hawthorn-bushes, or May-hedges, or honeysuckles, or wild vines, blue-bells, cowslips, or violets, such as we see in the shady lanes of merry England; but the linden-flowers,[10] the white blossoms of the mountain-ash, the bright flowers of the flax-fields, the varied forest tints, from that of the sombre pine to the light birch, the beautiful sky, and the majestic eagle floating magnificently on the air, are sufficient to inspire us with admiration. Immense quantities of strawberries and raspberries grow wild in Russia, also red and black currants are frequently met with in the woods. In the northern provinces there is a kind of yellow fruit, in shape like a mulberry, called maroshca, which makes an excellent preserve, and is also used medicinally as a remedy for the dropsy. Various wild berries, such as cranberries, bilberries, &c., abound in the forests, and numberless species of mushrooms; of all these they make preserves and pickles, which they use in the long winter-season as a substitute for fresh vegetables. The peasant-women and children gather them in great quantities and carry them about for sale, by which means they obtain a little money for the winter. A party of these villagers, with their prettily-shaped baskets made of birch-bark in their hands, and wearing their national costume, make interesting groups of figures, befitting admirably their native landscape.