THE GOOSEBEEET AND CUEEANT. 145 



size but little exceeding a cherry, is so insipid that it is 

 only brought to table to please the eye, while the one 

 which is described as the best flavoured, the " Mignone," 

 is also the very smallest, and a mere dark, slightly lobed 

 little pigmy,* less in size than a good black currant, and 

 burdened with an. appendage of shrivelled calyx twice as 

 long as itself. The Son Jardinier even, after describing 

 the plant as "covered with strong numerous thorns, which 

 make it very fit for impenetrable hedges," only names 11 

 varieties of the fruit. Nor is indiiference or contempt 

 for this fruit confined to the French, for a Piedmontese 

 botanist describes it as being " eatable, but somewhat 

 astringent," and in Spain and Italy it is hardly known, 

 the latter having no better name for it than Uva spina, or 

 the Prickly Grape, a term poetically elevated at Geneva 

 into Raisin de Mars. As it is always found, too, that the 

 fruit soon degenerates unless constant attention be be- 

 stowed on the plant, it is hardly likely that sufficient care 

 will ever be taken to develop its capabilities in climates 

 where abundance of fruit, equal or superior to it, can be 

 obtained from the vine, fig, or pear-tree, at the cost of far 

 less trouble. Nor, indeed, might any amount of care be 

 fully successful, for this " cold beauty of the JSTorth" does 

 not thrive well in warm countries, a low temperature 

 seeming necessary to brace it to perfection ; and, indeed, 

 so long as there be just sufficient sunshine to ripen it, the 

 colder the climate in which it grows the better is its qua- 

 lity; so that, other things being equal, its flavour will be 

 found finer in Yorkshire than in Devonshire ; bleaker 

 Scotland outrivals either, and even there Inverness sur- 

 passes Edinburgh. It does not even succeed well in the 

 United States, notwithstanding great pains have been 

 taken to introduce it there, the heat of the summers prov- 

 ing too great for it. Mrs. Trollope recorded that at Gin- 

 cinnati she found "gooseberries very few, and quite 

 eatable," and in the present day. though in the IS". an 

 States it thrives very well when planted in good soil, it is 

 most often seen in humble gardens in a very wretched 



* See Plate III., fig. 2 (not. size). ' 



10 



