(whereas the ripest currants require double that quantity) to induce the vinous fermentation, a very excellent and wholesome domestic wine may be made at a trifling expence. After standing several years in bottles well corked, it becomes equal in quality to muscadel, or other sweet Italian wines. If the flower-buds of this shrub be added to a cask of any other flavourless wine, Bryant asserts (in his 1st volume of "Nutritive Plants," p. 245, German edition) that they impart to it the taste of genuine muscadine.
Wild gooseberries, however, are of a very inferior size to those cultivated in a rich garden soil, especially when improved by inoculation, or engrafting; in which state they frequently attain an uncommon size.
There is another species of this shrub growing wild about woods and hedges, in several places in Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire, Norfolk, and the Isle of Wight. We allude to the Smooth Gooseberry, or Ribes uva-crispa, L. which can with difficulty be distinguished from the preceding species, either by the flower scales, or even by the smoothness of its berries. Mr. Robson assured Dr. Withering, that the seeds from the same plant will produce both rough and smooth gooseberries. The last-mentioned species, however, flowers somewhat later, thrives in almost every soil, and does not attain the size of the rough gooseberry: its yellow berries are transparent, juicy, and contain a great number of seeds.
Beside these, we met with another Linnæan species, or perhaps a variety of the former, called the Red-Gooseberry, or Ribes reclinatum, which grows wild in Germany, &c. has somewhat broader leaves than those before described, and produces a red or dark-purple fruit of a very sweet flavour. It thrives remarkably in a fat, light, and sandy clay: we therefore conclude that its berry would be eminently adapted to the preparation of domestic wines.
All the different gooseberries are wholesome fruit, but should not be eaten before they are perfectly ripe; nor is it proper to swallow their stones along with the juice; but the skin may, with probable advantage, be used by those who are accustomed to take large quantities at one time; in order to prevent flatulency. It is, however, founded on erroneous notions of their chemical properties, either to boil the unripe berries for sauces, or to convert them into domestic wines, which, though more cooling and refreshing, do not possess the delicate flavour, and rich saccharine quality, inherent only in ripe fruit.
Gooseberry Caterpillar. See vol i. p. 456.
Goose-Corn. See Moss-rush.
GOOSE-FOOT, or Chenopodium, L. a genus of plants, comprising twenty-seven species, eleven of which are indigenous; of these the following are the principal:
1. The Bonus Henricus, Perennial Goose-foot, Mercury Goose-foot, or Good King Henry, which grows amongst rubbish, on road sides, and walls; and is sometimes found in pastures: it produces purplish-green flowers, that are in bloom from May to August. This plant is cultivated like spinach by the poorer class of people in Lincolnshire: its leaves are frequently boiled in broth; and the young shoots, when peeled and dressed,
