56 OUR COMMON FRUITS. 



winter preserve. The Muscle is also a well-known good 

 kind for culinary purposes, and the Orleans was formerly 

 a favourite, but has been almost superseded of late years 

 by newer sorts. The old-fashioned Magnum Bonum, too, 

 which long held its station as the largest of our plums, is 

 equalled in this respect and far surpassed in taste by the 

 similarly shaped but yellower " Coe's Golden Drop," 

 which partakes of the flavour of the Greengage and Apri- 

 cot, and, if gathered with part of the branch attached, 

 and hung in a dry room, will keep till near Christmas. 



It is, however, in the Greengage that the acme of plum 

 perfection is reached, this famous fruit being admitted, 

 even by the Americans, to surpass every other kind that 

 has been produced in any country. No account seems 

 to have been preserved of how or where it originated, but 

 it is said to have been introduced into France by Queen 

 Claude, wife of Francis I., and is generally known in that 

 country as the Heine Claude,* though in some parts bear- 

 ing local epithets, mostly complimentary, such as "Alricot 

 verd" at Tours, and " la verte bonne" at E-ouen. Its 

 English title is derived from the Gage family, a member 

 of which, some time during last century, procured a col- 

 lection of trees from the Chartreuse monastery at Paris, 

 on the arrival of which all were found duly marked with 

 names except the specimen of Heine Claude, from which 

 the label had been omitted or lost ; whereupon the gar- 

 dener, assuming the sponsorial office, dutifully bestowed 

 upon it the name of, his employer, in addition to the 

 adjective denoting its unusual colour. It sometimes re- 

 produces itself from its stones, the planting of which, 

 however, have also given rise to numerous varieties, some 

 coloured like their parent, while others, under the name 

 of red or yellow "gages," have striven vainly to rival 

 their peerless verdant progenitor ; while one base coun- 

 terfeit, strikingly like the Greengage in appearance, 

 mocks the eater in being only remarkable, in point of 

 flavour, for its utter insipidity. Vigorous, but never very 



* The Germans, following the sound of these words, give the Greengage 

 the title of Orunen Renklode. 



