e smooth, with the exception of thorns at
the bases of the buds. The thorns themselves are either very small, few
and single, or very large and triple; they are {355} sometimes reflexed
and much dilated at their bases. In the different varieties the fruit
varies in abundance, in the period of maturity, in hanging until
shrivelled, and greatly in size, "some sorts having their fruit large
during a very early period of growth, whilst others are small until
nearly ripe." The fruit varies also much in colour, being red, yellow,
green, and white--the pulp of one dark-red gooseberry being tinged with
yellow; in flavour; in being smooth or downy,--few, however, of the Red
gooseberries, whilst many of the so-called Whites, are downy; or in
being so spinose that one kind is called Henderson's Porcupine. Two
kinds acquire when mature a powdery bloom on their fruit. The fruit
varies in the thickness and veining of the skin, and, lastly, in shape,
being spherical, oblong, oval, or obovate.[737]

I cultivated fifty-four varieties, and, considering how greatly the
fruit differs, it was curious how closely similar the flowers were in
all these kinds. In only a few I detected a trace of difference in the
size or colour of the corolla. The calyx differed in a rather greater
degree, for in some kinds it was much redder than in others; and in one
smooth white gooseberry it was unusually red. The calyx also differed
in the basal part being smooth or woolly, or covered with glandular
hairs. It deserves notice, as being contrary to what might have been
expected from the law of correlation, that a smooth red gooseberry had
a remarkably hairy calyx. The flowers of the Sportsman are furnished
with very large coloured bracteae; and this is the most singular
deviation of structure which I have observed. These same flowers also
varied much in the number of the petals, and occasionally in the number
of the stamens and pistils; so that they were semi-monstrous in
structure, yet they produced plenty of fruit. Mr. Thompson remarks that
in the Pastime gooseberry "extra bracts are often attached to the sides
of the fruit."[738]

The most interesting point in the history of the gooseberry is the
steady increase in the size of the fruit. Manchester is the metropolis
of the fanciers, and prizes from five shillings to five o