THE POMEGRANATE.—­This fruit has been cultivated in Asia from earliest antiquity, and is still quite generally grown in most tropical climes.  In the Scriptures it is mentioned with the vine, fig, and olive, among the pleasant fruits of the promised land.  It is about the size of a large peach, of a fine golden color, with a rosy tinge on one side.  The rind is thick and leathery.  The central portion is composed of little globules of pulp and seeds inclosed in a thin membrane, each seed being about the size of a red currant.  It is sub-acid, and slightly bitter in taste.  The rind is strongly astringent, and often used as a medicine.

THE GRAPE.—­Undoubtedly the grape was one of the first fruits eaten by mankind, and one highly valued from antiquity down to the present time.  Although this fruit is often sadly perverted in the manufacture of wine, when rightly used it is one of the most excellent of all fruits.  The skins and seeds are indigestible and should be rejected, but the fresh, juicy pulp is particularly wholesome and refreshing.  Several hundred varieties of the grape are cultivated.  Some particularly sweet varieties are made into raisins, by exposure to the sun or to artificial heat.  Sun-dried grapes make the best raisins.  The so-called English or Zante currant belongs to the grape family, and is the dried fruit of a vine which grows in the Ionian Islands and yields a very small berry.  The name currant, as applied to these fruits, is a corruption of the word Corinth, where the fruit was formerly grown.

THE GOOSEBERRY.—­The gooseberry probably derives its name from gorse or goss, a prickly shrub that grows wild in thickets and on hillsides in Europe, Asia, and America.  It was known to the ancients, and is mentioned in the writings of Theocritus and Pliny.  Gooseberries were a favorite dish with some of the emperors, and were extensively cultivated in gardens during the Middle Ages.  The gooseberry is a wholesome and agreeable fruit, and by cultivation may be brought to a high state of perfection in size and flavor.

THE CURRANT.—­This fruit derives its name from its resemblance to the small grapes of Corinth, sometimes called Corinthus, and is indigenous to America, Asia, and Europe.  The fruit is sharply acid, though very pleasant to the taste.  Cultivation has produced white currants from the red, and in a distinct species of the fruit grown in Northern Europe and Russia, the currants are black or yellow.

THE WHORTLEBERRY AND BLUEBERRY.—­These are both species of the same fruit, which grows in woods and waste places in the North of Europe and America.  Of the latter species there are two varieties, the high-bush and the low-bush, which are equally palatable.  The fruit is very sweet and pleasant to the taste, and is one of the most wholesome of all berries.