374 THE GOOSEBERRY. 



Class II. Black Currants, (Ribes nigrum.} 



Common Black or Black English. Large, one third of an 

 inch in diameter, quite black, clusters very short ; with a 

 strong odor, flavor poor. 



Black Naples. Largest of 'all currants, sometimes five- 

 eighths of an inch in diameter, resembling in flavor the 

 preceding, but ripening later, and with larger clusters. 

 The largest currant known. Sometime used for jellies. 



THE GOOSEBERRY. 



The Gooseberry,* as mostly cultivated in this country, is 

 a native of the North of Europe. The American species 

 have very rarely or never been improved by cultivation. 

 The foreign species has been multipiied into thousands ot 

 varieties in England. The catalogue of the London Hor- 

 ticultural Society enumerates 149 sorts worthy of notice, 

 anil Lindley gives a list of more than 700 prize sorts. 

 Large numbers of these are, of course, distinguished by 

 the slightest distinctive shades. Some, by the most perfect 

 culture, with pruning, and thinning the fruit on the branch- 

 es, have been made to attain a diameter of two inches, and 

 a weight of an ounce and a half. But such mammoth sorts 

 are usually neither so good in flavor nor so profitable for 

 raising as those of a medium size. 



The productiveness of the gooseberry, under good man- 

 agement, is very great. The Whitesmith and some other 

 varieties frequently bear so copiously, that the fruit is strung 

 along the branches in actual contact, for several inches to- 

 gether. Finer fruit, it is true, may be had by thinning, 

 when the berries are yet small ; and the exhaustion is less 

 than when the bushes are heavily laden. 



Some instances of great productiveness are given by B. 

 G. Boswell, in the Horticulturist. In one instance, a gar- 

 dener near Philadelphia, gathered from two rows, one hun- 

 dred and fifty feet long, six bushels, which sold for twenty- 

 four dollars ; and another cultivator in the same neighbor- 

 hood, gathered thirteen quarts from a single plant. 



* Supposed to have been formerly much used as a sauce with green goose, whence 

 its name. 



