the whortle-berry, or Bilberry, in botany: A genus of plants of the class of octandra, and order of monogynia; and arranged in the natural system under the 18th order, Bicornes. The calyx is superior; the corolla monopetalous; the filaments inserted into the receptacle; the berry quadrilobular and polypernous. There are 15 species; the most remarkable of which are:

1. The myrtillus, black-whorts, whortle-berries, or bilberries, growing in woods and on heaths abundantly. The flowers frequently vary, with five segments at the rim, and with ten stamina. The berries when ripe are of a bluish black colour; but a singular variety, with white berries, was discovered by the duke of Athol, growing in the woods, about mid-way between his two seats of Dunkeld and Blair. The berries have an astringent quality. In Arran and the Western Isles they are given in diarrhoeas and dysenteries with good effect. The Highlanders frequently eat them in milk, which is a cooling agreeable food; and sometimes they make them into tarts and jellies, which last they mix with whisky, to give it a relish to strangers.—They dye a violet colour; but it requires to be fixed with alum. The grouse feed upon them in the autumn.

2. The uliginosum, or great bilberry bush, is found in low moist grounds, and almost at the summits of the Highland mountains. The leaves are full of veins, smooth and glaucous, especially on the under side; the berries are eatable, but not so much esteemed as the preceding; as they are apt, if eaten in any quantity, to give the headache.

3. The vitis idea, or red whortle-berries, frequent in dry places, in heaths, woods, and on mountains. The berries have an acid cooling quality, useful to quench the thirst in fevers. The Swedes are very fond of them made into the form of a rob or jelly, which they eat with their meat as an agreeable acid, proper to correct the animal alkali.

4. The oxyccus, cranberries, moss-berries, or moor-berries, frequent on peat-bogs in the Lowlands, but not so common in the Highlands of Scotland. The stalks are long, slender, woody, weak, and trailing: the leaves are stiff, acutely oval, glaucous underneath, their edges turned back, and grow alternate; two or three flowers grow singly on long red footstalks out of the extremity of the branches; the flowers are red, divided deeply into four acute segments, which are reflexed quite backwards; the filaments are downy; the antherae ferruginous and longer than the filaments: the berries red, and about the size of the hawthorn berries. At Longtown, on the borders of Cumberland, they are made so considerable an article of commerce, that, at the season when they are ripe, not less than 20l. or 30l.'s worth are sold by the poor people each market-day for five or six weeks together, which are afterwards dispersed over different parts of the kingdom for making the well-known cranberry tarts.