BIKES ALBIDTJir. 9 



observable in different specimens, may arise from the natural tendency of tbe plant 

 to variation when raised from seed. The best varieties are slender-stemmed, and 

 quite deciduous, but we have seen a specimen -with a coarse arborescent stem, dense 

 foliage, almost evergreen, and which produced prodigious crops of its insipid black 

 berries. 



They will thrive in almost any soil, but succeed best in such as is moderately rich 

 and moist, the natural habitat of the species sanguineum, being often in the neighbour- 

 hood of the Californian streams. Cuttings of the ripened years' wood, taken off in 

 autumn, and treated as those of the common gooseberry, will root readily in a sheltered 

 border. 



With the exception of the equally interesting Ribes aureum, or golden flowered gooseberry, 

 the plant now figured, with its sister varieties, are the only members of the Ribes family, 

 commonly found in cultivation, which, considering the beauty of many of the remaining 

 species, is a matter of surprise. 



Among those less known, we may mention the elegant Ribes speciosum, with red 

 flowers and long projecting stamens ; the R. cereum, or wax-leaved currant, with roundish 

 glandular leaves, covered with a thin layer of a wax -like substance ; the R. punctatum> 

 from Chile, with dotted leaves, and greenish yellow flowers, borne in erect racemes ; and 

 handsomer still, the snowy-flowered gooseberry, R. niveum, with flowers of the pui'est 

 white, and berries of a deep rich purple colour, which, unlike those of the other flowering- 

 species, are of an agreeable flavour, and, according to Dr. Lindley, 'when ripe, make 

 delicious tarts, and would probably form an excellent means of improving the common 

 gooseberry, by hybridizing.' 



All who have ever gathered a gooseberry — and who has not? — have, we do not doubt, 

 heartily wished the bushes thornless, but they would scarcely prefer the habit of another 

 of the family, Ribes Menziesii, published by Sir James Smith, under the name of 

 R. ferox, which he describes as 'a very remarkable species, whose branches are thickly 

 covered with tawny setaceous prickles, about a quarter of an inch in length, and armed 

 under each bud with three very strong and pungent ones, an inch long, having sometimes 

 lesser rcflexed prickles at their base ; ' and what is worse, the young berries are ' covered 

 with prominent glandular bristles, which harden, as the fruit advances, into stiff sharp 

 spines, so that whatever its flavour may be, it seems perfectly inaccessible in the common 

 way of eating gooseberries.' 



Another species, R. cynosbati, the dog-bramble gooseberry, a native of Canada, has also 

 prickly fruit. 



Nearly all the Ribes grown as ornamental shrubs, are natives of the North American 

 Continent ; one or two, however, are found only in South America, and a few in Siberia, 

 Hungary, and other parts of Europe. 



