146 OTJE COMMON FETTITS. 



state, bearing poor small fruit covered with mildew, partly 

 from ignorance of the proper mode of culture, and partly 

 because the inferior sorts mostly grown are always ex- 

 tremely liable to this disease. In the countries of N. 

 Europe, however, there is no reason why a fruit which so 

 amply repays any care that may be devoted to it in a suit- 

 able climate should not be brought to all the perfection 

 of which it is capable ; and, accordingly, Germany, in 

 at least its appreciation of the gooseberry, ranks only 

 next to England. Dochnahl speaks of it as one of the 

 most valuable of fruits, and describes no less than 540 

 sorts, while Dr. von Pausner published, at Jena, in 1852, 

 a very elaborate monograph of gooseberries. The Danish 

 Government, too, are so sensible of its merits, that goose- 

 berry bushes are supplied to gardeners from the national 

 nurseries in Denmark, at a cost of little more than a 

 halfpenny per plant, in order to encourage its culture. 

 In our own country it must have come under cultiva- 

 tion as early as the 16th century, for Tusser, in 1557, 

 writes : 



" The barberry, respis, and gooseberry too, 

 Look now to be planted as other things do;" 



but does not appear to have been held in very high esteem, 

 for Gerard, in 1597, after mentioning that the tender 

 leaves are good for salad information of some value to 

 those who could not, like Queen Catherine, send to Hol- 

 land when they needed herbs for that purpose and 

 commending the berries as useful in various culinary 

 compounds, yet adds that, " if eaten by themselves, they 

 engender raw and cold blood." Parkinson, however, by 

 1624, had learned to know better than this, and of the 

 five kinds, " three red, a blue, and a green," which were 

 all that were known in his time, says that " all of them 

 have a pleasant winie taste, acceptable to the stomach of 

 anie, and none have been distempered by the eating of 

 them that ever I could hear of." Still they were consi- 

 dered inferior to almost any other fruit, and, perhaps, 

 justly so, for they had made but little progress in the 

 hands of the gardeners ; nor were our gooseberries equal 



