CG4 



GOOSEFOOT GRACULA. 



and a half. Gooseberries, although grown, are nut 

 very common in the gardens either of Southern or 

 Northern Europe : the heat of the summers in Spain 

 and Italy being too great, and in Norway and Sweden 

 the seasons are too rapid for the full development of 

 the fruit. In England, as already observed, goose- 

 berries are much esteemed, both as a dessert and 

 kitchen fruit ; and the facility with which, when 

 in an unripe state, they can be preserved throughout 

 the year in bottles, from which the air has been ex- 

 cluded by boiling, renders them very servicable as a 

 winter fruit. Gooseberries also, when preserved with 

 sugar, make very good jams and jellies ; and, when 

 fermented, an excellent wine is produced, which 

 sparkles when the cork is drawn, and is known as 

 English champagne. 



The pleasant acidulous flavour, of the gooseberry 

 depends upon the presence of a malic acid blended 

 with sugar ; and upon the varied proportions in which 

 these two principles are developed, depends the fitness 

 of the several varieties for dessert or kitchen use, for 

 preserving or for making wine. 



The cultivation of the gooseberry is exceedingly 

 simple : young plants are raised from cuttings, taken 

 from the trees in autumn, and planted then or at any 

 time during winter. The cuttings are prepared by 

 trimming off all the buds from the lower part, leaving 

 only four or five at the top to form the future branches. 

 The cuttings should be chosen from the strongest 

 shoots produced from branches, not from the suckers 

 from the root : the bottom and point is cut off, leav- 

 ing the extermediate part fifteen or eighteen inches 

 long ; six or seven inches of the bottom part is in- 

 serted into the ground i the like length forms the 

 stem, and the branches issue from the top. Some 

 pains are bestowed to give the branches a right direc- 

 tion to form the future tree. If they rise too erectly 

 they are bent a little horizontally by hooks ; if too 

 inclining, they are held up by forked sticks. The 

 branches should be trained first outwards and then 

 upwards, leaving the centre open and rather thin of 

 branches. The summer shoots are produced along 

 the branches, and which are annually pruned down to 

 about an inch at the base. This is the chief culture 

 gooseberry-trees require. 



GOOSEFOOT is the Chenopodium of Linnaeus 

 and other botanists. They are found in all quarters 

 of the globe, though mostly innocuous ; some of 

 them have a most offensive scent and flavour, and 

 are used medicinally as anthelmintics ; and many of 

 them are used as spinach. The seeds of C. quinoa, 

 or petty rice, are used as food in tropical America. 



GORYTES (Latreille). A genus of hymeno- 

 pterous insects, belonging to the section Aculeata, and 

 sub-section Fossores, and family Crabronidce, having 

 three complete sub'tnarginal cells, of a squarish form, 

 and of nearly equal size, the second of which re- 

 ceives two recurrent nerves^; the mandibles are in- 

 ternally unidentate, and the antennae are somewhat 

 thickened at the tips. These insects have much the 

 appearance of small wasps, but they are solitary in 

 their habits. Some of the species have the fore legs 

 furnished with spines, and these are supposed to be 

 the constructors of their own nests, whilst others are 

 destitute of these appendages in the female sex, and 

 are, consequently, regarded by M. le Comte de Saint 

 Fargeau as parasitic, and are accordingly considered 

 by this author as belonging to distinct genera, the 

 characters of which he has detailed in a valuable 



monograph upon the group, published in the Annals 

 of the Entomological Society of France. 



GOSSYP1UM (LinniEus). A beautiful and very 

 useful genus of annual and perennial herbs and shrubs, 

 chiefly natives of India. The flowers are monadel- 

 phous, and rank in the natural order, Malvaceae. 

 The great commercial importance of the cotton plant, 

 or rather plants, for several of the genus yield cotton, 

 makes its history interesting. In China the G. reli- 

 giosum is chiefly cultivated, it yielding the yellow 

 coloured cotton of which nankeen cloth is made. 

 G. herbaceum is cultivated in many parts of the old 

 world as well as in the new. G. Jjarbadense is a 

 herbaceous annual, extensively cultivated in that and 

 other West India islands. But the plant which 

 affords the finest cotton, cultivated at the Isle of 

 Bourbon, in the East Indies, and in South America, 

 is probably what is called by Roxburgh, G. obtusif<>- 

 lium. This is a large, handsome evergreen shrub, 

 much resembling in foliage and manner of growth tlm 

 Judas tree of our gardens. The plants are put in 

 about eight feet distances from each other, and in re- 

 gular rows, and the ground is kept clean among them 

 by the hoe. The plant begins to flower very early, 

 or as soon as it is a foot or two high. The flowers 

 are numerous, and followed by capsules, containing 1 

 the seeds, wrapped in cotton. When the capsules 

 burst the cotton and seeds are liberated, and then 

 collected into baskets by children, who carry them 

 to the warehouse to be, in the first place, freed from 

 seeds, and afterwards packed in bales for sale. The 

 seeds are separated from the cotton by children, by 

 means of a small machine held on the lap. A crank 

 handle, turned with one hand, moves two small metal 

 cylinders, which revolve against each other so closely, 

 that while the cotton, fed in by the other hand, passes 

 through, the seeds are discharged behind. 

 " It appears from parliamentary returns that the 

 annual imports of cotton into this country are much 

 above 227,000,000 Ibs. These returns give some 

 idea of the immense value of this plant in the manu- 

 facture of whose seed-down there is invested a capital 

 in Great Britain alone of 56,000,000/., giving direct 

 employment to upwards of 830,000 of our population, 

 and being manufactured into goods of the annual 

 value of 36,000,000/. 



GOURD is the name of the fruit of the Cucnrbita 

 potira of Linnaeus. They are creeping plants, with 

 gross stems, large leaves, and monstrous fruit. Their 

 generic name is given from the circumstance that the 

 shells are formed into various vessels for domestic 

 use, such as bottles, basins, bowls, &c. Many of the 

 species are cultivated as articles of food or drink, or 

 medicine. Some of the bottle gourds (Lagcnaria) 

 grow to a very large size, forming flasks six feet long, 

 by a foot and a half in circumference ; and, when 

 quite young, are made into spoons. The Arabians 

 call the plant charrah, and the poorer people often eat 

 the fruit, boiled with vinegar, or fill the shell with 

 rice and meal, and thus make it into a kind of pud- 

 ding. Some of the bottle gourds have a bitter ca- 

 thartic pulp, which may be used instead ofcolocynth ; 

 but others, especially the cultivated varieties, have 

 a sweet and esculent flesh. These latter are some- 

 times called sweet calabashes ; but they must not be 

 confounded with the true calabashes, which are species 

 of Crescentia. 



GRACULA Crackle. The French ornitho- 

 logists call birds of this genus martins, and with them 



