THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE RED CURRANT. 263 
four names under this species. As descending from R. rubrum he 
received only four varieties ; three unnamed sorts from gardens in 
Lithuania, and one striped variety, ' Gloire de Sablons.' Deriving 
from R. petraeum the ' Rote Kernlose ' (seedless) was noted, and from 
hybrids between the above species ten varieties. From this the 
author concluded that R. rubrum had played but a small part in the 
production of the Red Currants generally known in commerce, and 
since his day this opinion has been generally accepted, as witness a 
remark in Mr. Bean's recent work, " Trees and Shrubs Hardy in Great 
Britain," p. 409: " R. rubrum. . . . Cultivated forms of this species 
are grown in the gardens of Scandinavia, but in Western and Central 
Europe the cultivated Red and White Currants are exclusively R. 
vulgar e." This is, in my opinion, a misstatement. It is curious that 
in the collection brought together by Janczewski direct descendants 
of R. rubrum were missing, but the fact remains that there are many 
grown in this country and elsewhere. The well-known ' Raby Castle ' 
is a true R. rubrum with large fruits, showing no characters of R. 
vulgar e, as also are the ' Red Scotch,' ' Millearn Red,' and ' Erstling 
aus Vierlanden.' Many varieties are obviously crosses between 
rubrum X vulgar e, such as ' Fowler's Long Bunch,' ' La Constante,' 
'St. Madoe's,' ' Langtraubige/ 'Red Champagne,' and others. It 
seems evident that it was only a matter of luck that Janczewski's 
collection did not include these sorts, and that R. rubrum has played 
no inconsiderable part in the origin of the Red Currant. The part 
played by R. petraeum will be dealt with in the next section. 
In tracing the horticultural development of the Red Currant the 
writer has had recourse to Herbals and such garden literature as was 
available. Of previous writings on this aspect of the question there 
are the useful works of Sturtevant/ 4 ) which give many references to 
literature, but his history only begins at Ruellius and makes no 
reference to the part played by the different species or to the date 
they came into Currant development. For the early literature a paper 
by Fischer Benzon/ 5 ) is valuable, and taken in conjunction with that 
of Sturtevant gives a fairly complete reference to the Herbals in 
which records of the Red Currant may be found. In searching for 
the earliest record of the Red Currant it is not surprising to find 
that it was unknown to the Greeks or Romans or any of the other 
Mediterranean dwellers. The history of cultivated fruits, with but 
few exceptions, records a steady invasion from the East, westward 
and northward, accompanying successive waves of civilization. The 
Red Currant, being a fruit of the temperate regions, has never spread 
far south, and its insignificance compared with the luscious Eastern 
fruits would not have assisted any such movement. Whilst Ribes 
rubrum and R. petraeum are found in the Alpine region of Central 
Europe, they do not seem to have attracted the attention of gardeners. 
An old French writer puts forward the speculation that Hannibal 
in his trans-alpine journey may have descended from his elephant 
