142 OUR COMMON FRUITS. 



leaves form a principal ingredient in the beverage known 

 by the name of gneiss, and are also put into white spirit 

 to give it a brown brandy tint. The efficacy of black 

 currant jam or jelly in affections of the throat is almost 

 universally known and taken advantage of, though its 

 virtues are in England too often greatly diminished by 

 the use of more sugar than is fitting in making the pre- 

 serve. The leaves of the Black Currant, when dried, are 

 sometimes used in England and Scotland instead of green 

 tea, two or three of them imparting an additional zest to 

 the ordinary Souchong, scarcely to be distinguished, as 

 some say, from real Hyson, and only needing a Celestial 

 name to be esteemed equal to any import from the Mowery 

 Land. It is in the transparent yellow dots at the back of 

 the leaves that the strong and peculiar odour of the plant 

 resides. The flowers vary very slightly from those of the 

 Hed species, being greenish-yellow in colour, sometimes 

 tipped with red, and closely resembling in formation those 

 of the gooseberry, but grouped in greater numbers into 

 racemes. One of its varieties, too, furnishes that brightest 

 ornament of early spring, the Ribes sanguinwn* which, 

 though only introduced here from the north-west coast of 

 America in 1826, is now seen almost everywhere, drooping 

 its elegant clusters of rosy blossoms, varying from pale pink 

 to deep red, among its leaves of vivid green, long before the 

 pale tints of our forefathers' lilacs and laburnums have un- 

 folded their more delicate beauties. The seeds grow freely 

 in this country, producing new varieties, but in all of them 

 it is the flower alone for which they are valued, all the 

 resources of the plant seeming to be expended in deco- 

 rating itself with these showy blossoms, for the fruit which 

 succeeds them is an insipid bluish-black berry, more simi- 

 lar to a bilberry than either to a currant or a gooseberry, 

 and as a fruit quite worthless. Having thus glanced at 

 its kindred, whether among useful or ornamental plants, 

 we turn once more to the head of the Eibes family, the 

 gooseberry, "our own, our native " plant, for we may call it 

 so on double grounds, being not only indigenous to our 



* See Plate III., %. 4, 



