he wild bees frequent these
trees, and it is probable that here St John found his twofold aliment;
but we have no particular reason to suppose that he wholly lived on
fruit, and certainly could have little to do with strawberries, as
there is no species indigenous in the Holy Land.

But we must now proceed to examine and record the structure of the
raspberry, raspis, or hindberry, by all which names it is called. This
is a species of the Rubus, of which Hooker records only ten species as
native in Britain, though Loudon extends the number to thirteen; of
which one, the dwarf crimson (_Rubus araticus_), is to be found only
in Scotland. We cannot, of course, notice each of these species
separately, nor will it be necessary to do so, as the varieties which
mark the different kinds of common bramble are such as would not be
observed except by an accurate botanist. This tribe, which takes its
name from the Celtic _rub_, which signifies _red_, and is supposed to
be so named from the red tint of its young shoots, as well as from the
colour of the juice of its berry, consists chiefly of shrub-like
plants, with perennial roots, most of which produce suckers or stolons
from the roots, which ripen and drop their leaves one year, and resume
their foliage, produce blossom shoots, flowers, and fruit, and die the
next year, of which the raspberry and common bramble are examples. In
some of the species the stem is upright, or only a little arched at
the top, but in the greater number it is prostrate and arched, the
ends of the shoots rooting when they reach the ground, and forming new
plants, sometimes at the distance of several yards from the parent
root. The branches and stems are all more or less prickly; those of
the common bramble being armed with strong and sharp spines, and even
the leaf-stems lined with very sharp reflected prickles, which hitch
in everything they come near, and inflict sharp wounds. The corolla is
formed of an inferior calyx of one leaf, divided into five segments,
of five petals in some species; and in others pink, but always of very
light and fragile texture, and more or less crumpled, on which the
caterpillar of the beautiful white admiral butterfly (_Limenitis
camilla_) sometimes feeds. It has many stamens, arranged like those of
the strawberry; and the pistil is composed, as that is, of a number of
carpels rising out of a central receptacle.

But now let us examine the structure of the fruit, which we sh