CCRRANTS. 63 



and preserving, and good crops of fine fruit are 

 very profitable, but they cannot be grown remune- 

 ratively in dry and poor land. Some of the most 

 profitable bushes seen by the writer grew on the 

 sloping banks of a wide ditch or stream that passed 

 through a cottager's garden. They bore on an 

 average thirty pounds of fruit each, which sold for 

 *2d. a pound. The bushes were six feet through, 

 and overhung the water. The crops were not easy 

 to gather, but beyond the little trouble involved in 

 that respect they cost absolutely nothing to pro- 

 duce, and the bushes occupied a position on which 

 nothing else could be usefully grown. 



Black Currant cuttings may be made and inserted 

 in the way advised for Gooseberries, with the im- 

 portant exception that no buds need be removed ; 

 it is desirable, however, to cut off the top of each 

 cutting for inciting the production of branches. 



Suckers that are objectionable when springing 

 from the stems beneath the surface of the ground 

 in Gooseberries, and often ruinous in the case of 

 Red Currants, are advantageous rather than other- 

 wise to the black fruited kind. The crops are 

 borne mainly on the young shoots of the previous 

 year, and the stronger these are, as a rule, the finer 

 the fruit : and as the suckers make strong branches, 

 by encouraging their production and cutting out the 



