Addresses — Strawberries. 139 



safety, as no express agent or other person would have risked 

 tasting of them more than once; the quality being, if possible, 

 worse than their appearance. The No. 2 bore about as well as the 

 "Wilson. The berries being about the size of the common navy 

 bean, and not altogether unlike it in shape. In color, it was about 

 like a half ripe cranberry. In quality, please imagine a cross 

 between the green cranberry and a wild crab apple. 



Thus has it been for nearly twenty years, a succession of fail- 

 ures. It may be asked, were they all as complete failures as those 

 named? Not quite; from the Triomphe De Grand, the Jucunda, 

 Seth Boyden's, No. 30, Kentucky, Duncan, and perhaps a few 

 others, I have succeeded in getting some magnificent fruit. I rec- 

 ollect once picking twenty-five berries from some of my Jucunda 

 vines, that made a full quart, and that, too, without looking for 

 the largest ones. Still, if I could have known just how much that 

 quart cost in manure and time, I have no idea that it would have 

 been less than one dollar, and perhaps considerably more than 

 that. The nearest that I have ever come to a success with any of 

 the many new varieties that I have tried, is with the Duncan. 

 But that is too soft to bear transportation, which of course shuts it 

 out, even if it were right in other respects. Next to that I would 

 place the No. 30. 



Perhaps I cannot express my estimate of the value of the many 

 new varieties better than in the following way: If some responsi- 

 ble parties should offer me ten cents per quart for all the Wilsons 

 that I could produce, I should not hesitate to fill every acre of land 

 that I possess, with them, just as fast as I could get it ready, and 

 get the plants to put in. On the contrary, if the same parties 

 should offer me fifty cents per quart for all I could raise, and con- 

 fine me to any two or three varieties that have come out within the 

 last twenty years, I should hesitate long and consider very care- 

 fully, before I accepted it, even far enough to make an extensive 

 trial. Understand me, gentlemen; I do not say that some of these 

 varieties are not worthy of trial, or that they should be utterly con- 

 demned under all circumstances. I have no doubt but that good 

 fair crops of them have been obtained at times, where the soil, 

 climate and cultivation were all adapted to their peculiar wants. 

 But I am speaking to-day for the millions of our people who love 

 strawberries, b«t do not have them; and for other millions who 



