and Blyth has said that these crosses are very abundant in India. The true home of the species is in eastern Siberia or Mongolia. It is distinguished by its long smooth neck, marked dorsally by a chocolate streak. The reclaimed form is usually distinguished by the knob at the base of the bill, but the evidence of many observers shows that this is not found in the wild race. Of this bird there is a perfectly white breed.
We have next to mention a very curious form, Cereopsis novae-hollandiae, which is peculiar to Australia, and is a more terrestrial type of goose than any other now existing. Its short, decurved bill and green cere give it a very peculiar expression, and its almost uniform grey plumage, bearing rounded black spots, is also remarkable. It bears captivity well, breeding in confinement, but is now seldom seen. It appears to have been formerly very abundant in many parts of Australia, from which it has of late been exterminated. Some of its peculiarities seem to have been still more exaggerated in a bird that is wholly extinct, the Cnemiornis calcitrans of New Zealand, the remains of which were described in full by Sir R. Owen in 1873 (Trans. Zool. Society, ix. 253). Among the first portions of this singular bird that were found were the tibiae, presenting an extraordinary development of the patella, which, united with the shank-bone, gave rise to the generic name applied. For some time the affinity of the owner of this wonderful structure was in doubt, but all hesitation was dispelled by the discovery of a nearly perfect skeleton, now in the British Museum, which proved the bird to be a goose, of great size, and unable, from the shortness of its wings, to fly. In correlation with this loss of power may also be noted the dwindling of the keel of the sternum. Generally, however, its osteological characters point to an affinity to Cereopsis, as was noticed by Dr Hector (Trans. New Zeal. Institute, vi. 76-84), who first determined its Anserine character.
Birds of the genera Chenalopex (the Egyptian and Orinoco geese), Plectropterus, Sarcidiornis, Chlamydochen and some others, are commonly called geese. It seems uncertain whether they should be grouped with the Anserinae. The males of all, like those of the above-mentioned genus Chloëphaga, appear to have that curious enlargement at the junction of the bronchial tubes and the trachea which is so characteristic of the ducks or Anatinae. (A. N.)
GOOSE (Game of), an ancient French game, said to have been
derived from the Greeks, very popular at the close of the middle
ages. It was played on a piece of card-board upon which was
drawn a fantastic scroll, called the jardin de l’Oie (goose-garden),
divided into 63 spaces marked with certain emblems, such as
dice, an inn, a bridge, a labyrinth, &c. The emblem inscribed on
1 and 63, as well as every ninth space between, was a goose.
The object was to land one’s counter in number 63, the number
of spaces moved through being determined by throwing two
dice. The counter was advanced or retired according to the space
on which it was placed. For instance if it rested on the inn it
must remain there until each adversary, of which there might
be several, had played twice; if it rested on the death’s head
the player must begin over again; if it went beyond 63 it must
be retired a certain number of spaces. The game was usually
played for a stake, and special fines were exacted for resting on
certain spaces. At the end of the 18th century a variation of
the game was called the jeu de la Révolution Française.
GOOSEBERRY, Ribes Grossularia, a well-known fruit-bush
of northern and central Europe, placed in the same genus of
the natural order to which it gives name (Ribesiaceae) as the
closely allied currants. It forms a distinct section Grossularia,
the members of which differ from the true currents chiefly in
their spinous stems, and in their flowers growing on short footstalks,
solitary, or two or three together, instead of in racemes.
The wild gooseberry is a small, straggling bush, nearly resembling the cultivated plant,—the branches being thickly set with sharp spines, standing out singly or in diverging tufts of two or three from the bases of the short spurs or lateral leaf shoots, on which the bell-shaped flowers are produced, singly or in pairs, from the groups of rounded, deeply-crenated 3- or 5-lobed leaves. The fruit is smaller than in the garden kinds, but is often of good flavour; it is generally hairy, but in one variety smooth, constituting the R. Uva-crispa of writers; the colour is usually green, but plants are occasionally met with having deep purple berries. The gooseberry is indigenous in Europe and western Asia, growing naturally in alpine thickets and rocky woods in the lower country, from France eastward, perhaps as far as the Himalaya. In Britain it is often found in copses and hedgerows and about old ruins, but has been so long a plant of cultivation that it is difficult to decide upon its claim to a place in the native flora of the island. Common as it is now on some of the lower slopes of the Alps of Piedmont and Savoy, it is uncertain whether the Romans were acquainted with the gooseberry, though it may possibly be alluded to in a vague passage of Pliny: the hot summers of Italy, in ancient times as at present, would be unfavourable to its cultivation. Abundant in Germany and France, it does not appear to have been much grown there in the middle ages, though the wild fruit was held in some esteem medicinally for the cooling properties of its acid juice in fevers; while the old English name, Fea-berry, still surviving in some provincial dialects, indicates that it was similarly valued in Britain, where it was planted in gardens at a comparatively early period. William Turner describes the gooseberry in his Herball, written about the middle of the 16th century, and a few years later it is mentioned in one of Thomas Tusser’s quaint rhymes as an ordinary object of garden culture. Improved varieties were probably first raised by the skilful gardeners of Holland, whose name for the fruit, Kruisbezie, may have been easily corrupted into the present English vernacular word.[1] Towards the end of the 18th century the gooseberry became a favourite object of cottage-horticulture, especially in Lancashire, where the working cotton-spinners have raised numerous varieties from seed, their efforts having been chiefly directed to increasing the size of the fruit. Of the many hundred sorts enumerated in recent horticultural works, few perhaps equal in flavour some of the older denizens of the fruit-garden, such as the “old rough red” and “hairy amber.” The climate of the British Islands seems peculiarly adapted to bring the gooseberry to perfection, and it may be grown successfully even in the most northern parts of Scotland; indeed, the flavour of the fruit is said to improve with increasing latitude. In Norway even, the bush flourishes in gardens on the west coast nearly up to the Arctic circle, and it is found wild as far north as 63°. The dry summers of the French and German plains are less suited to it, though it is grown in some hilly districts with tolerable success. The gooseberry in the south of England will grow well in cool situations, and may be sometimes seen in gardens near London flourishing under the partial shade of apple trees; but in the north it needs full exposure to the sun to bring the fruit to perfection. It will succeed in almost any soil, but prefers a rich loam or black alluvium, and, though naturally a plant of rather dry places, will do well in moist land, if drained.
The varieties are most easily propagated by cuttings planted in the autumn, which root rapidly, and in a few years form good fruit-bearing bushes. Much difference of opinion prevails regarding the mode of pruning this valuable shrub; it is probable that in different situations it may require varying treatment. The fruit being borne on the lateral spurs, and on the shoots of the last year, it is the usual practice to shorten the side branches in the winter, before the buds begin to expand; some reduce the longer leading shoots at the same time, while others prefer to nip off the ends of these in the summer while they are still
- ↑ The first part of the word has been usually treated as an etymological corruption either of this Dutch word or the allied Ger. Krausbeere, or of the earlier forms of the Fr. groseille. The New English Dictionary takes the obvious derivation from “goose” and “berry” as probable; “the grounds on which plants and fruits have received names associating them with animals are so commonly inexplicable, that the want of appropriateness in the meaning affords no sufficient ground for assuming that the word is an etymologizing corruption.” Skeat (Etym. Dict., 1898) connects the French, Dutch and German words, and finds the origin in the M.H.G. krus, curling, crisped, applied here to the hairs on the fruit. The French word was latinized as grossularia and confused with groseus, thick, fat.
