The Gooseberry. 139 



of ancient cultivation. Like the sweet violet, and many 

 other flowers, it often wanders out of gardens. Way- 

 farers, eating the fruit as they go along, cast the seeds 

 right and left, and these germinating readily, the plant is 

 soon arm-in-arm with the aborigines. The ancient Greeks 

 and Romans would seem to have had no knowledge of it. 

 If known, it was disregarded, this doubtless because in 

 southern and south-eastern Europe the berries are small 

 and tasteless, which circumstance explains the neglect 

 of the gooseberry, not only in the past, but at present, in 

 the south-west. Even in France it is little cared for. 

 The climate which suits it is precisely that which is best 

 loved by the scented rose, the humid one of Britain ; and 

 in this last-named happy land the perfection attained by 

 the one is reached in corresponding degree by the other. 

 No country in the world excels Britain in regard to its 

 gooseberries. They ripen delightfully in every part, and 

 for the poor man as well as the rich. To say where the 

 best are produced is not easy. The district pre-eminently 

 favourable is reputed to be that one distinguished as the 

 Lothians. 



When first noticed, when first named, there is no 

 evidence to show, unless indicated, in some measure, by 

 the etymology, which seems to be traceable to certain old 

 Gothic words denoting crisp, curled, or frizzled, thus to 

 indicate, at the same time, that the original gooseberry 

 was the hairy one, the Uva crispa of renowned old 

 Fuchsius, who gives a drawing of it on page 187 of his 

 Historia, published in 1537, temp. Henry VIII. Primi- 



