THE GOOSEBERRY— continued. 
with mackerel, has replaced in general use the far older Feabes. This last occurs 
in an Early English tenth-century manuscript ; and, besides being still in wide- 
spread colloquial use, under various slightly differing forms, is used by Gerard. 
He writes : — 
‘‘The fruit is vseJ in divers sawces for meates, and vsed in broths in stead of Verjuyce, which maketh the brothe not 
only pleasant to taste, but is greatly profitable to such as are troubled with a hot, burning ague. The ripe berries are sweet, 
but yceld little nourishment, and are scldome eaten or vsed as sawce . . . the young and tender leaves are eaten in sallads,’^ 
The spinous stems and flowers, either solitary or two or three together, 
characterise a sub-genus Grossularia, as distinguished from Ribesia, with unarmed 
stems and many-flowered racemes. The name Currant for these last, whether red-, 
white-, or black-, fruited, is simply a transfer of the name of the small black grapes — 
widely differing in structure — which have long been exported from Corinth. 
The rigid buff spines in the Gooseberry are generally in groups of three below 
the leaf-buds, and may represent a leaf with its stipules. The leaves, which are of a 
vivid light green when young, are orbicular, three- to five-lobed, and irregularly 
crenate, with sheathing bases to their petioles ; and it is interesting to trace in the 
leaf-bud the series of transitions from a mere sheath serving as an outer bud-scale 
to forms with more or less rudimentary blades and ultimately to fully-formed 
leaves with sheath, stalk, and blade towards the interior of the bud. The flowers 
hang downwards and expand in April and May, their short downy stalks 
bearing minute bracteoles. Greenish at first, the lobes of the calyx bend backward 
and become tinged with brown or red, and the throat of the calyx-tube, the bases 
of the stamens, and the young ovary may all bear stiff hairs which arch over 
and protect the honey from the shorter-tongued insects. In the form most 
commonly found wild on the Continent, to which Linnasus gave the name Ribes 
Uva-crispa^ the ovary is glabrous. 
In England the Gooseberry is most commonly merely an escape from 
cultivation, its sticky seeds being often carried from cottage gardens to neighbouring 
hedgerows or copses by birds, much as are those of the Mistletoe. In the North, 
however, as also in Scandinavia, it seems truly indigenous. 
Over three hundred varieties of Gooseberry are known in cultivation, with 
fruits varying in form, from round to oblong, oval, and obovoid ; in colour, from 
green to yellow, whitish, or red ; and in surface, from smoothness to downiness or 
hairiness. It is the hardiest of all our cultivated fruits and, in fact, succeeds better 
in our northern counties than in the warmer south, and better in our moist air 
than in the drier atmosphere of the eastern United States. 
