It is so workmanlike a performance that I suspect the _leprachauns_, who are shoemakers, of having been called in to do it,--called in, for the _leprachauns_, without doubt, have all they can do conveniently, making and mending the fairy shoon. No doubt the brownies, who are domestic fairies and who would be keeping watch of the woodland fruits anent the preserving season, had them attend to this, lest the preserving be a failure. The poke berries look so rich and luscious that I have tried them; but I cannot say that I like the flavor, which is rich indeed, but peculiar. But then, I remember my first olive. They don’t taste half so bad as that did, and compared with pickled limes, which school-girls eat with avidity, they are nectar and ambrosia in one package. All the under-pine world is spread just now with beautiful berries, for which neither we nor the birds seem to have a taste. There are the partridge berries, which, by the way, I have never seen a partridge eat, nor have I found them in the crops of partridges, which I have been mean enough to shoot. Yet these are, to my mind, the most edible of all, though they are insipidly sweet, and their flavor is so finely pleasant that it is not for the coarse palate of most mortals. Their vines carpet the wood in places, and the soft, pure red of the berries would catch the eye of bird or beast from afar. These stay ripe and sound all winter, and you may see their red shining softly among the evergreen leaves when the bare ground responds, dull and sleepy still, to the resurrection trump of spring. They have not been gobbled whole, therefore the larger animals and birds of the wood do not care for them; but in the spring you will often find them with a tiny bite taken out of one side. This can have been done by no other than the fairy urchins, too young to eat fruit with safety, and forbidden by their mothers, they yet slip out and take a bite before they can be hindered. Equally beautiful and conspicuous, and equally insipid to the human taste, are the great blue berries of the _Clintonia borealis_, which grows sparingly under the pines hereabouts. These are as large as the end of your finger, and a wonderful clear shade of prussian blue. If you know the leaf of the lady’s slipper,--the moccasin-flowered orchid which is so common in June under all pines,--you might, thinking of the leaf only, call this the fruit of the lady’s slipper, where, as sometimes happens, but one berry grows on a stem. Yet if you look further you will not long labor under the mistake, for you will find many stalks with several berries, whereas the single blossom of the _Cypripedium acaule_ could leave behind it but one. The fruit of the lady’s slipper is at this time of the year a dry brown pod, whence all the little dry seeds have long ago dropped; indeed, it is only occasionally that you will find the pod left so long.