The species existed both wild and cultivated in Mexico before the arrival of the Spaniards. Hernandez[1357] describes nine varieties of it, which shows the antiquity of its cultivation. The cochineal insect appears to feed on one of these, almost without thorns, more than on the others, and it has been transported with the plant to the Canary Isles and elsewhere. It is not known how far its habitat extended in America before man transported pieces of the plant, shaped like a racket, and the fruits, which are two easy ways of propagating it. Perhaps the wild plants in Jamaica, and the other West India Islands mentioned by Sloane,[1358] in 1725, were the result of its introduction by the Spaniards. Certainly the species has become naturalized in this direction as far as the climate permits; for instance, as far as Southern Florida.[1359] It was one of the first plants which the Spaniards introduced to the old world, both in Europe and Asia. Its singular appearance was the more striking that no other species belonging to the family had before been seen.[1360] All sixteenth-century botanists mention it, and the plant became naturalized in the south of Europe and in Africa as its cultivation was introduced. It was in Spain that the prickly pear was first known under the American name _tuna_, and it was probably the Moors who took it into Barbary when they were expelled from the peninsula. They called it fig of the Christians.[1361] The custom of using the plant for fences, and the nourishing property of the fruits, which contain a large proportion of sugar, have determined its extension round the Mediterranean, and in general in all countries near the tropics. The cultivation of the cochineal, which was unfavourable to the production of the fruit,[1362] is dying out since the manufacture of colouring matters by chemical processes. +Gooseberry+—_Ribes grossularia_ and _R. Vacrispa_, Linnæus. The fruit of the cultivated varieties is generally smooth, or provided with a few stiff hairs, while that of the wild varieties has soft and shorter hairs; but intermediate forms exist, and it has been shown by experiment that by sowing the seeds of the cultivated fruit, plants with either smooth or hairy fruit are obtained.[1363] There is, therefore, but one species, which has produced under cultivation one principal variety and several sub-varieties as to the size, colour, or taste of the fruit. The gooseberry grows wild throughout temperate Europe, from Southern Sweden to the mountainous regions of Central Spain, of Italy, and of Greece.[1364] It is also mentioned in Northern Africa, but the last published catalogue of Algerian plants[1365] indicates it only in the mountains of Aures, and Ball has found a variety in the Atlas of Marocco.[1366] It grows in the Caucasus,[1367] and under more or less different forms in the western Himalayas.[1368]