"The berry is round, like the red English berries, instead of ellipsoid, like their white or golden ones.
"There is also another variety, hairy instead of spiny, about the size of your picture of the Downing; bush not so free a grower, rarely reaching two feet, and the berry, to my taste, much inferior. Tastes, however, differ, and it may be the more promising fruit.
"Both varieties are common throughout the eastern end of El Dorado,
Placer, and Nevada counties."
The first-named, or thorny gooseberry, probably belongs to the Ribes cynosbati, and the latter to the R. rotundifolium. The writer is correct in thinking that, if such gooseberries are growing wild, cultivation and selection could secure vast improvements. When we remember that English gardeners started with a native species inferior to ours, we are led to believe that effort and skill like theirs will here be rewarded by kinds as superb, and as perfectly adapted to our climate.
CHAPTER XXVIII
DISEASES AND INSECT ENEMIES OF SMALL FRUITS
Nature is very impartial. It is evidently her intention that we shall enjoy all the fruits for which we are willing to pay her price, in work, care, or skill, but she seems equally bent on supplying the hateful white grub with strawberry roots, and currant worms with succulent foliage. Indeed, it might even appear that she had a leaning toward her small children, no matter how pestiferous they are. At any rate, under the present order of things, lordly man is often their servant, and they reap the reward of his labors.
Did not Nature stumble a little when man fell? She manages to keep on the right side of the poets and painters, for it would seem that they see her only when in moods that are smiling, serious, or grand. The scientist, too, she beguiles, by showing under the microscope how exquisitely she has fashioned some little embodiment of evil that may be the terror of a province, or the scourge of a continent. While the learned man is explaining how wonderfully its minute organs are formed, for mastication, assimilation, procreation, etc., practical people, who have their bread to earn, are impatiently wishing that the whole genus was under their heels, confident that the organs would become still more minute.
The horticulturist should be cast in heroic mold, for he not only must bear his part in the fight with moral wrong, like other men, but must also cope with vegetable and insect evil. Weeds, bugs, worms, what hateful little vices many of them seem in nature! I do not wish to be thought indiscriminate. Many insects are harmless and beautiful; and, if harmless, no one can object if they are not pretty. Not a few are very useful, as, for instance, the little parasite of the cabbage worm. There is need of a general and unremitting crusade against our insect enemies; but it should be a discriminating war, for it is downright cruelty to kill a harmless creature, however small. Still, there are many pests that, like certain forms of evil, will destroy if not destroyed; and they have brought disaster and financial ruin to multitudes.
Mark Tapley hit upon the true philosophy of life, and it is usually possible to take a cheerful view of everything; such a view I suggest to the reader, in regard to the pests of the garden that often lead us into sympathy with the man who wished that there was "a form of sound words in the Prayer-Book which might be used in cases of great provocation." Under the present order of things, skills, industry, and prompt, vigilant action are rewarded. Humanity's besetting sin is laziness; but weeds and insects for months together make this vice wellnigh impossible, save to those who are so unfortunate as to live on the industry of others. Therefore, though our fruits often suffer, men are developed, and made more patient, energetic, resolute, persevering—in brief, more manly. Put the average man into a garden where there were no vegetable diseases, insects, and weeds to cope with, and he himself would become a weed. Moreover, it would seem that in those regions where Nature hinders men as much as she helps them, they are all the better for their difficulties, and their gardens also. Such skill and energy are developed that not only are the horticultural enemies vanquished, but they are often made the means of a richer and a fuller success.