Horticuliural Notes. 201 



there are many other thousands whose minds are in accord with nature, and 

 who can detect beauties veiled to more superficial ej^es, who have never 

 doubted that his last days were infinitely more happy than those spent on 

 a throne. 



Fertilization of Strawberries. — It is claimed by some strawberry 

 growers that the color, shape, flavor, etc., of fruit produced by a pistillate 

 strawberry will be largely determined by the variety used in fertilizing it. 

 I have used Longworth's Prolific, Wilson, Cumberland Triumph and many 

 other staminate sorts as fertilizers for McAvoy's Superior, Hovey's Seedling, 

 Green Prolific, Crescent and other pistillate sorts, but have never seen the 

 berries of the latter vary from their ordinary fixed type. When fructified 

 by Sharpless I have never known Crescent to produce a coxcomb-shaped 

 berry, nor Champion to fail to produce its usual proportion of fiat berries 

 when fertilized by Cumberland Triumph, a variety whose berries are uni- 

 formly conical. It .seems reasonable to believe that impregnation of the 

 strawberry can only aflfect the seed and can have no influence on the pulp in 

 which it is imbedded. Variation in the fruit of a single variety may be 

 more reasonably attributed to variation in soil. We send our fruits to the 

 fertile soils of Kansas and California, and when specimens of them are re- 

 turned to us we often fail to recognize tliem. 



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