3l6 THE SMALL FRUITS OF NEW YORK 



"Other Varieties of different Sorts. Champaigne Gooseberry — Rum- 

 bullion Gooseberry — Large Ironmonger Gooseberry — Smooth Ironmonger 

 Gooseberry — Hairy Globe Gooseberry — Large Tawney, or Great Mogul 

 Gooseberry." 



Mawe's descriptions are very brief and some of his " kinds "as he 

 calls them are group rather than varietal names. They furnish the infor- 

 mation we want as regards the fruits, however, as we shall find in the 

 summing up to determine when certain characters of gooseberry fruits 

 first appeared. The improvement of the gooseberry in England from this 

 time on goes forward in leaps and bounds. The Catalog of Fruits of the 

 Horticultural Society of Lojidon for 1825 lists 185 varieties as growing in the 

 garden of the society, while Lindley in his Guide to the Orchard and Kitchen 

 Garden gives a list of 722 varieties. 



There need be no further concern about the number of English goose- 

 berries — the number now probably runs into four figures — but it should 

 be of interest and profit to know what the characters of the modem goose- 

 berry are. Perhaps we can get this information best by using the fifth and 

 last edition of Hogg's admirable Fruit Manual, 1884, in which the following 

 characters are set forth: 



Color; red, yellow, green, white. Shapes; round or roundish, oblong, 

 oval, obovate. Skin; smooth, downy, rough or hairy, with or without 

 bloom. Fruits; two- or three- veined. Size; large, small, meditim. Season; 

 early, late, medivmi. Flavors; sweet or sour. 



A careful reading of Parkinson and Rea, with some allowance for 

 changes in terms and styles of description, shows almost certainly that 

 gooseberries grown three centuries ago possessed all of the characters 

 that they now have or had when Hogg wrote in 1884, excepting, possibly, 

 the great size of the berries of modem varieties. It seems almost certain 

 that a study of the history and botany of the gooseberry would show that 

 all of the types now in gardens existed in nature and were brought into 

 gardens and thus described as our early pomologists found them. 



The breeders of gooseberries, then, have been able to add no new 

 characters to this fruit excepting size and the succulency that follows. 

 The changes in color, season, flavor, shape, and degrees of smoothness and 

 hairiness have all come from hybridizing and crossing. This digression is 

 made because the gooseberry illustrates partictdarly well what seems to 

 be true of all our fruits, namely, that cultivation and the protective influence 

 of man plays small part or no part in the improvement of fruits except in 



