FOOTNOTES: [36:1] "Gardener's Chronicle." [36:2] "Although beer is now seldom made from birchen twigs, yet it is by no means an uncommon practice in some country districts to tap the white trunks of Birches, and collect the sweet sap which exudes from them for wine-making purposes. In some parts of Leicestershire this sap is collected in large quantities every spring, and birch wine, when well made, is a wholesome and by no means an unpleasant beverage."--B. in _The Garden_, April, 1877. "The Finlanders substitute the leaves of Birch for those of the tea-plant; the Swedes 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."