Please allow me to say a few words in favor of the English gooseberry. It appears, from what I have lately read, it came very near being excluded from the American Pomological Society's list of small fruits. To have rejected it would, I think, be a great mistake. It is a most excellent fruit. I only wish to add my experience to some one or two others of your correspondents who not long since spoke in its favor.

Those who in their youth have eaten plenty of good English gooseberries, cannot easily forget them.

We have several indigenous species growing wild in the Northern and Middle States, which proves, I think, the climate of these States at least, is not uncongenial to its growth.

There may be some difficulty in perfecting its fruit, but we have few fruits there is not some difficulty in growing. It flourishes best in a clay soil, or heavy loam, but will grow in much lighter soils under good management. It only needs sufficient shading and good mulching, with at least one good watering when going out of blossom, to yield and ripen its delicious fruit. It will grow under shade better than any other fruit we know, and will do well trained up to the north side of a fence or building. Under proper treatment, it will grow and bear many years.

It is increased by nearly all the known modes of propagation, but the readiest and quickest is by pieces of its own roots. Any old bushes, apparently worthless, may be dug up in the spring, their roots chopped in pieces three or four inches in length, planted in a nursery row in good ground, three or four inches deep, according as the soil is light or heavy; these will grow more in one year than a cutting will in two or three; besides, any one can do this, even the most inexperienced in the art of propagation.

Circumstances must dictate the mode of shading, but I found bast matting to answer very well, and had no more trouble with insects than if they had been covered with mosquito netting.

The best way of mulching is to remove the top soil down to the roots, in a circle of three or four feet in diameter; they will be stripped of course, but must be covered up again with about a quarter of an inch of earth, so as not to let the manure come in contact with the roots; then four or five inches of good rotten manure laid on and well trodden down; then replace the earth on top, level or sloping inwards to catch the water, when good luck sends it. Rake off nicely, and the manure will scarcely be noticed.

The American sorts may be managed the same way, but I prefer the English gooseberry, and have always thought it amply paid for the labor and trouble bestowed upon it.

Chambersburg, Trenton, N. J.