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Plums (Sloe or wild Plum borne by our)

THE Sloe, or wild Plum, borne by our Blackthorn of the hedgerows, is well known as an oval, blue-black, small fruit, of autumn produce, harsh, and sour until mellowed by the early frosts. Its dark ruby juice enters largely into the manufacture of British Port wine. If obtained by expression of the Sloes this juice is very useful as an astringent medicine, and is a popular remedy for stopping nose-bleeding. Country people bury the Sloes in jars to preserve them for winter use; they should be gathered on a dry day, picked clean, and put into jars, or bottles, without any boiling, or other such process, and then covered with loaf sugar; a tablespoonful of brandy should be presently added, and the jar sealed. By Christmas the syrup formed by the juice, the sugar, and the spirit, will have covered, and saturated the fruit; so that then a couple of tablespoonfuls will not only serve as an agreeable dessert liqueur, but will further act as an astringent cordial of a very useful sort. The Sloe bush is often called provincially "Scroggs." Sloe leaves, when they unfold late in the spring, will, if dried, make a very good substitute for foreign tea. The blossoms answer for preparing a safe, harmless, laxative syrup excellent for children; by taking a spoonful or two daily for three, or four days, costiveness will be overcome gently, and painlessly, but thoroughly.

The hard, round Bullace (Prunus insititia) grows likewise in our English hedgerows, this being the fruit (five times as big as the Sloe) of a shrub having fewer thorns. Country folk make therefrom Bullace wine; and boys in France call both fruits (equally astringent) "Sibarelles," because it is so difficult to whistle immediately after masticating them. Wild Plums in Devonshire are Kestings, or Gristlings.

The cultivated Plum has been developed from the Sloe, and wild Plum; its Damson variety being formerly the fruit product of Damascus, (Damascenes). When ripe the cultivated Plums are cooling, and slightly laxative, especially the French fruit, which is dried, and bottled for dessert. Philip Dormer, the famous Lord Chesterfield, in one of the well-known letters to his son then at Paris (1757), told him: "Lord Bacon, who was a very great physician in both senses of the word, hath this aphorism in his essay on 'Health': 'Nihil magis ad sanitatem tribuit quam crebræ et domesticæ purgationes'; by domesticæ S