ne highly valued from antiquity down to the present
time. Although this fruit is often sadly perverted in the manufacture of
wine, when rightly used it is one of the most excellent of all fruits.
The skins and seeds are indigestible and should be rejected, but the
fresh, juicy pulp is particularly wholesome and refreshing. Several
hundred varieties of the grape are cultivated. Some particularly sweet
varieties are made into raisins, by exposure to the sun or to artificial
heat. Sun-dried grapes make the best raisins. The so-called English or
Zante currant belongs to the grape family, and is the dried fruit of a
vine which grows in the Ionian Islands and yields a very small berry.
The name _currant_, as applied to these fruits, is a corruption of the
word _Corinth_, where the fruit was formerly grown.

THE GOOSEBERRY.--The gooseberry probably derives its name from
gorse or goss, a prickly shrub that grows wild in thickets and on
hillsides in Europe, Asia, and America. It was known to the ancients,
and is mentioned in the writings of Theocritus and Pliny. Gooseberries
were a favorite dish with some of the emperors, and were extensively
cultivated in gardens during the Middle Ages. The gooseberry is a
wholesome and agreeable fruit, and by cultivation may be brought to a
high state of perfection in size and flavor.

THE CURRANT.--This fruit derives its name from its resemblance to
the small grapes of Corinth, sometimes called Corinthus, and is
indigenous to America, Asia, and Europe. The fruit is sharply acid,
though very pleasant to the taste. Cultivation has produced white
currants from the red, and in a distinct species of the fruit grown in
Northern Europe and Russia, the currants are black or yellow.

THE WHORTLEBERRY AND BLUEBERRY.--These are both species of the same
fruit, which grows in woods and waste places in the North of Europe and
America. Of the latter species there are two varieties, the high-bush
and the low-bush, which are equally palatable. The fruit is very sweet
and pleasant to the taste, and is one of the most wholesome of all
berries.

THE CRANBERRY.--A German writer of note insists that the original
name of this fruit was cram-berry, because after dinner, when one was
filled with other food, such was its pleasant and seductive flavor that
he could still "cram" quite a quantity thereof, in defiance of all
dietetic laws. Other writers consider the name a corruption of
craneberry, so called because i