No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 621 



though a postulate, was a long stride forward in American straw- 

 berry development. The introduction of the Peabody in the fifties 

 triumphantly marked a great epoch. This fact was especially no- 

 ticeable in its relation to the breeding or originating of new varieties. 

 The five dollars per dozen for plants, as received by the propagators, 

 who got in on the ground floor, when the Peabody tide was at its 

 flood, caused many who were horticulturally inclined, to see visions, 

 and to dream golden hued dreams, when they were not sleeping. 

 A steady shower of new varieties began to fall upon the public; 

 tinted by the glittering crystals of beguiling hopes, and the fasinating 

 charms of unbridled expectancy, hundreds of these little innocents 

 still in their swaddling attire of gorgeous tinsel, were adjudged and 

 condemned as horticultural "goldbricks." They simply made a faint 

 and brief little twinkle, and were promptly replaced by that same 

 shower which seems as though it might "go on forever." 



In Fuller's small Fruit Culturist, published in 1867 there are 

 named one hundred and twenty odd varieties of strawberries of 

 American origin. In a revised edition of this work, published four- 

 teen years later (1881), the same author only names ninety-four 

 varieties. In neither list is there a variety named that is regarded 

 as profitable or desirable by the successful growers of the present. 

 In 18G7, Orange Judd and Company published the first volume of 

 their horticultural annul or year book, and in the Introduction by the 

 editor this sentence occurs: "We diff'er as much from Europe in 

 our horticultural operations as we do in other matters, and it will 

 be a long time before we attain — if we ever do — that state of refine- 

 ment that comes of a dense population, cheap labor, and great in- 

 dividual wealth." I take it that the word refinement as it appears 

 in that somewhat i-emarkable sentence has reference to our horti- 

 culture only. Be it so, and what do we behold as we look through 

 the Kaleidoscope of i)rogress during the interval between 1867 and 

 the present? Surely the great wealth of individuals no longer bars 

 us from full participation in the ennobling distillations of that 

 European refinement in horticulture. If growing a car-load of 

 strawberries Avhere but a crate was grown in 1867, and distributing 

 the same, at prices so as to make them available to the pent up resi- 

 dents of all our large cities, if this tends toward refinement, our 

 American horticulture is giving its European cousin the busiest 

 time in its history, to maintain its supremacy. If however, a re- 

 finement of our horticulture is in any way dependent upon a pauper- 

 ized condition of labor, it is infinitely preferable that it continue in 

 its plebeian vulgarity. While the standard of excellence as to qual- 

 ity and size has made little if any advancement in strawberry cul- 

 ture, during the last half-century there centainly has been marked 

 progress in meeting and supplying the essentials for field culture, in 

 varieties embod^'ing size, firmness and productiveness; features that 

 vitally affect the interests of growers for distant markets. This 

 question of varieties at best is so very local and circumscribed in its 

 nature, that it resolves itself into a problem to be correctly solved 

 by personal or individual experience only. The general and fixed 

 peculiarities of the plant render it sensitive to any lack, or uncon- 

 geniality in soil conditions. One variety proves a rank failure 

 where another is every way satisfactory, while perhaps not a mile 



