12 THE SMALL FRUITS OF NEW YORK 



uninvited in the gardens. That it was not earHer domesticated and 

 improved is due to the great abundance of the wild crop; to the preference 

 for the red raspberry, varieties of which were brought from Europe; and to 

 the fact that small fruits of all kinds received scant consideration frbm 

 fruit growers until recent years. 



It is impossible to say when the black raspberry was introduced into 

 cultivation. Brought from the fields into a good garden any wild black 

 raspberry plant becomes markedly more productive, and individual fruits 

 increase one-fourth or more in size. It is a convenience to have fruit at 

 hand and not have to go to fields or woods for the daily supply. There- 

 fore, thrifty housewives must have insisted on having plants of this fruit as 

 inhabitants of their gardens. All of the early American books on fruits 

 mention the black raspberry but do not list varieties. The first named 

 variety seems to have been the Ohio Everbearing, found by Nicholas 

 Longworth, Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1832, and by him named and offered as a 

 garden plant. 



Some years before this, about 1825, Thomas Rivers of Sawbridge- 

 worth, England, sowed seeds of a black raspberry and gave the offspring 

 attention through several generations for thirty or forty years. No perma- 

 nent varieties came from Rivers' work but his experience in part may be 

 repeated, as a very good accotmt of what happens in growing hybrid 

 raspberries. The account,^ considerably condensed, is as follows: 



" Some time ago (probably nearer forty than thirty years since) I 

 received from a very old gardener, living at Weathersfield, near Braintree, 

 in Essex, a curious kind of Raspberry, which he called the ' Black Rasp- 

 berry '. In the course of years I raised many generations from my Black 

 Raspberry; the seedlings all partook more or less of the qualities of the 

 parent stock, giving berries more or less piuple and acid, and keeping them- 

 selves distinct from our Red Antwerp and other sorts of Raspberries. Some 

 ten or twelve or more years since I received, among many novelties, from 

 the late A. J. Downing, of America, a plant of the Ohio Everbearing Rasp- 

 berry. This was planted, with other new kinds, in a department near to 

 my seedling black Raspberries, and, after observing its pecuUar nature of 

 bearing a full crop in autumn, it did not attract further notice, as its fruit 

 was small and acid. 



"A few years — perhaps two or three — after the introduction of this 

 sort, I happened to be passing a bed of my seedling black Raspberries which 

 had been raised in the usual way, and observing among them som_e canes 

 different in colour to the others — they had the blue tinge peculiar to the 



^ Card. Chroii. S16. 1867. 



