Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

EDIBLE PLANTS 369regions. I have in mind more than one example ofextreme suffering, and even of tragedy, that mighthave been averted by such precaution. Besides,there is a great number of people on this continentwho spend a good part of their lives far back in thewoods, where cultivated vegetables are hard to get.Having myself "lived the life," I know how insistentgrows the craving for green stuff to vary themonotonous diet, and how profitable as well aspleasant is a little amateur botanizing with a pocketguide, such as Schuyler Mathews's Field Book ofAmerican Wild Flowers^ which suffices to identifymost of the plants on the foj lowing lists.I have been much amused, by way of variety, atthe attitude of a few skeptics who seem to doubtthat the writer knows what he is talking about.One of my correspondents even wrote to inquirewhether I "had any personal experience in eating^,ny of these plants !" I suppose he inferred from mycitations of authorities here and there that the wholething was cribbed. It is not fashionable nowadays,I know, for writers who seek popularity to quotedirectly from others, or even to acknowledge indebtednessfor ideas that they appropriate throughparaphrasis. However, I am old-fashioned enoughto give credit where credit Is due, whenever I canidentify the one from whom I first got a fact oridea that to me was new. In the following cataloguemy citation of an authority does not mean,then, that I have not tried the thing for myself, althoughin some cases that is so. During the yearsthat I have lived in the woods I have tested agreat variety of wild "roots and yarbs"—tried themin my own stomach; otherwise I would not havewritten a line on the subject. Here is a ratherodd example, taken from my notebook under date ofPvlay 10, 1 9 10, at which time I was boarding witha native family on upper Deep Creek, Swain County,North Carolina:Mrs. Barnett to-day cooked us a mess of green'sof her own picking. It was an olla podrida consist-