CLASS V. ORDER I. 



325 



(lautly the grateful acidity thau the others. They are boiled with 

 nearly an equal weight of sugar, and make an excellent preserve use- 

 ful for a variety of culinary purposes ; and the juice, boiled with au 

 equal weight of lump sugar into a jelly, is esteemed as a delicious 

 addition to the sauce of roast hare, venison, and a long kept leg of 

 mutton, and also for various kinds of confectionery. The agreeable- 

 ness of the red currant depends upon its peculiar aroma in combination 

 with malic acid and saccharine matter, and it imparts these qualities 

 to wine made from its fermented juice, with the addition of a quantity 

 of water and sugar ; a wine which is superior, in the opinion of many 

 persons, to several grape wines, which are procured at great ex- 

 pense, a circumstance that tends in no inconsiderable number of 

 cases to the increase of their estimation. When the fruit is fresh it is 

 cooling, and mostly very agreeable to the palate of those suffering from 

 fever, and a small quantity of its jelly added to boiling water, and 

 allowed to cool, is a useful drink agreeable for a lime to many persons 

 in a feverish state; and is said to lessen an increased secretion of bile, 

 and act as a laxative upon the bowels, but in some cases it occasions 

 considerable flatulency and uneasiness. 



The currant, like the gooseberry, is a plant flourishing only in a 

 cool climate, and seems there to supply the place of the grape in 

 warmer countries, requiring a longer time for the perfection of its 

 fruit than seems allowed it when planted in a warmer climate. We 

 have repeatedly seen the attempt made to grow them in the South of 

 Italy and Portugal ; but the plants become tall and straggling, quite 

 losing the compact character of the bush in its native country, and the 

 fruit is small, bitterish, and far from being pleasant, and very little 

 is produced : so that the Englishman far from his native land, who 

 still retains in memory the delights of this fruit, and the grateful taste 

 of his mother's preserve, must procure them in perfection from his 

 parent land. 



" On foreign mountains may the sun refine 

 The grape's soft juice, and mellow it to wine. 

 With citron groves adorn a distant soil, 

 And the fat olive swell with floods of oil: 

 We envy not the warmer clime, that lies 

 In ten degrees of more indulgent skies, 

 Nor at the coarseness of our heaven repine 

 Though o'er our heads the frozen Pleiads shine." 



Addison. 



2. R. petrcs'um, Wulf. (Fig. 394.) Rock Currant. Racemes with 

 glandular hairs, erect in flower, pendulous in fruit ; calyx smooth, cup- 

 shaped ; its segments beneath bluntish, flat; petals small, spatulate; 

 leaves pale and dull. 



English Botany, t. 705. — English Flora, vol. i. p. 332. — Hooker, 

 British Flora, vol. i. p. 122.— Lindley, Synopsis, p. 106, 



