1 40 Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



tive forms of the word are found in groise-berry and 

 grose-berry, with which may be compared the French 

 groseille and the Scotch grozet or grosart The synonym 

 found in the eastern counties, " fea-berry," also written 

 "feap-berry" and "fay-berry," though not yet satisfac- 

 torily explained, is of much more recent date. Which- 

 ever was the earliest form, the hairy or the hairless, the 

 plants are essentially the same. Both conditions occur 

 among the progeny obtained by sowing the seed of 

 either, and this quite independently of soil or climate. 

 The culture of the gooseberry appears to have been first 

 attended to at the period of the Reformation. It was 

 then taken up both in England and upon the continent, 

 say in Holland and in Germany; but the progress was 

 slow until within the last hundred years, during which 

 the strides have been rapid. Whether our ancestors ever 

 saw it in any other form than the little round bush, some 

 three or four feet in diameter, to which we are accustomed 

 in modern gardens, no historian has put upon record. 

 Perhaps it may be only within our own age that the 

 gooseberry has shown itself able to rise, when trained 

 against a house-front, to the height of several yards, 

 bearing plentifully to the very top, and presenting a beau- 

 tiful spectacle when led abreast of jessamine and clematis. 

 In one particular it never changes. The gooseberry 

 never forgets its prickles, which, by the way, compared 

 with the thorns and spines of prickly plants in general, 

 are very curiously exceptional, coming of a remarkable 

 development of the pulvinus. Fond, in the wild state, 



