To be sure, wild berries are yet common, but they would not interfere with the sale of better and cleaner berries which should come from civilized plantations. Wild cranberries are still abundant over thousands of acres, and the production of cultivated berries is rapidly increasing ; yet the price has advanced from 50 cents and $1 per bushel, with an uncertain market, 50 years ago, to 15 and 20 cents a quart. Wild blackberries are still abundant, yet they do not interfere with the sale of cultivated sorts.*

The largest cultivated bog in existence lies about six miles north of Wareham, and is under the management of A. D. Makepeace, one of the oldest and most experienced cranberry growers in the country. This bog is 160 acres in extent. Other bogs in the vicinity belong to the same management. These bogs are all as clean as the tidiest garden. The long and level stretches, like a carpet strewn with white and crimson beads, are a most pleasing and novel sight. Here in early Septem ber a thousand pickers camp about the swamps, some in temporary board cabins, but most of them in tents. The manager furnishes the provisions, which the campers cook for themselves, and he rents them the tents. One hundred and twenty pickers constitute a company, which is placed in charge of an overseer, and each company has a book-keeper. Each picker is assigned a strip about three feet wide across a section of the bog, and he is obliged to pick it clean as he goes. The pickers are paid by the measure, which is a broad six-quart pail with ridges marking the quarts (Fig. 2). Ten cents is paid for a measure.

There is wide variation in the quantity which a picker will gather in a day, ranging all the way from 10 measures for a slow picker, to 40 and even 50 for a rapid one ; and in extra good picking 75 measures have been secured.

Fig. 3. Picker.

•We shall soon publish an illustrated article upon the huckleberries and blueberries.

Various devices have been contrived for facilitating cranberry picking. The Cape Cod growers like the Lumbert picker best. This is illustrated in Fig. 3. This is essentially a mouse-trap-like box with a front 1 id raising by a spiral spring. The opera picker forward into the vines, closes the down with his thumb, and then draws backwards so as to pull off the berri fourth of the pickers use the implements not strong enough to handle them cot where the crop is thin they possess li Raking off the berries is rarely practice Cod region. It is a rough operation, a vines badly. Late in fall, if picking has been delayed and frost is expected or pickers are scarce, the rake is sometimes used. An ordinary steel garden rake is employed. The berries are raked off the vines, and the bog may then be flooded and the berries are carried to the flume, where they are secured.

This picking time is a sort of a long and happy picnic - all the happier for being a busy one. The pickers look forward to it from year to year. They are invigorated by the change and the novelty, and they must come near to nature in the sweet and mellow October days. Those of our readers who have cast their lot with hop pickers, or who have camped in the clearings in blackberry time, or who have joined the excursions to huckleberry swamps, can know something of the experiences of the cranberry picker. Yet I fancy that one must actually pick the cranberries in the drowsy Indian summer to know fully what cranberry picking is like.

The berries must now be sorted or "screened." If there are no unsound berries, the fruit can be fairly well cleaned by running it through a fanning mill; and some growers find it an advantage to put all the berries through the mill before they go to the band screeners. A screen is a slatted tray about six feet long and three and a half wide at one end and tapering to about ten inches at the other, with a side or border five or six inches high. The spaces in the bottom between the slats are about one-fourth inch wide. The screen is set upon saw-horses, and three women stand upon a side and handle over the berries, removing the poor ones and the leaves and sticks, and working the good ones towards the small and open end where they fall into a receptacle (Fig. 4). The berries are barrelled directly if they are not moist, but if wet they are first spread upon sheets of canvas - old sails being favorites - and allowed to remain until thoroughly dry.

The cultivated cranberry is a native of our northern states. It was first cultivated about 1810, but its culture had not become general until 40 or 50 years later. The berries naturally vary in size and shape and color, and three general types, named in reference to their forms, were early distinguished - the Bell, the Bugle and Cherry. These types are represented in Figs. 5 to 7, respectively. So late as 1856 varieties in his largest bog.

The common favorite is the Early Black, shown natural size in Fig. 5. This is valuable because of its earliness, as it comes in three weeks ahead of the medium sorts. Picking begins upon this variety about the first of September in the Cape Cod bogs. When fully ripe, the berries are purple-black, and for this reason they are favorites with consumers, for it is a common though erroneous notion that pale berries are unripe. In late fall, the foliage of the Early Black assumes a purplish tinge, which quite readily distinguishes it from any other variety.

Fig. 6.

The Dennis, a bugle berry (Fig. 6), is also a favorite because of its good size, productiveness and bright scarlet color. The fruit is picked late in September and early in October. The foliage is darker than that of the Early Red.

The McFarlin, an oval dark red berry, is probably the largest late berry grown.

The Gould (named for Dr. Gould, of Cape Cod) is a productive pear berry, of medium season, with a bright purple fruit and light colored foliage.

Lewis is probably the most brilliantly colored of the cranberries. It is a very bright glossy scarlet, medium in season, and pear-like in shape.

Franklin is a comparatively new pear sort, as late as Dennis, purple-red, with a high habit of growth. It appears to have little to recommend it above older sorts.