SECRETARY'S rOKTFOLIO. 327 



nearly two centuries liad still to elapse before, by means of saedlings and 

 hybridization, the gardeners produced tiie niagnilieently improved fruit which 

 now gratifies all our senses but hearing. To that early period, by the reference 

 to the habitat of tiie strawberry, if not by its date of composition, belongs the 

 nui'sery balhid in which the man of the wilderness is subjected to the witiiering 

 retort, abounding in Attic salt, but not more severe than such an ultramarine 

 question deserved : 



" 'IMie man of the wiMerness asked me 

 How many RtrawbcMrics gi-ew in the sea; 

 1 answci'od liim as I thoii,i;*ht good, 

 'As many red lierrings as <jrew in the wood.'" 



We find forced strawberries, and cherries, as well as ice-cream, mentioned as 

 being served at the insialhition dinner at Windsor, April 23, 1GG7, from which 

 Daincs Barrington conjectures tliat hot-houses and ice-houses were first intro- 

 duced into England during Cliarlcs II. reign ; but the idea of forcing straw- 

 berries and other fruits, as well as flowers, had already occurred to the great 

 Lord Bacon, who Avrites: 



**As we have housed the exotics of hot countries, lemons, oranges and 

 myrtles to preserve them, so we may house our natives to forward them; and 

 thus have violets, strawberries, and peas all winter, provided they be sown and 

 removed at proper times." 



During the course of the eighteenth century no marked improvement took 

 place in strawberry culture. 



In Langle}''s Pomona, 1720, only three kinds are mentioned, though the 

 Chili had been introduced two years previously. The Fragaria grandiflora, or 

 Surinam strawberry, is by some reckoned as a distinct species, but at any rate 

 its cultivation in this country was not attended with much success in the 

 eighteenth century. Switzer, wn'itingin 1724, informs us that strawberries and 

 cherries had been forced by manure heat from time immemorial by the London 

 market-gardeners. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, 

 there seems to have existed a prejudice against the empk:»yment of manure in 

 the growth of strawberries, for we find liiat an action at law was commenced 

 by tiie landloi"d against a Dutch gardener who came to England in the reign 

 of Queen Anne, and settled on the Grosvenor estate between Vauxhall and 

 Chelsea. This Dutchman hekl views in advance of his age on the subject of 

 liquid manure; i)ut he was not allowed in thoie short-sighted times to poison 

 the land with filthy i-efuse, and it has been reserved for ahnost our own 

 generation to place absolute faith in the princi[)K'S of Mechi, and lose all 

 repugnance to the unerherial, whilst degluting our doubtfully swollen berries. 



The fjuit was called by name of ''strawberry" long before any patent slug- 

 traps or truss- ecures were thought expedient for the well-being of the fruit. 

 It has been iri'efutably proved that the origin of the sylhible "straw" is the 

 Anglo-Saxon " strahen, to scatter," and that the fruit is called strawberry, 

 or straying berry, from the erratic natuie of its runners. 



So free from deleterious qualities is the strawberiy, and so wholesome is the 

 fruit in its action, that the nu st rcstiicled and cioss grained doctor cannot 

 allege anything to its demerit. No acetous fei mentation ensues from the pro- 

 cess of digestion, and no ill effects follow a copious repast. Perhaps at this 

 point a few remarks legarding ihe medicinal jirojiei ties of the strawberry may 

 not prove uninteresting to our readers. In Kettnei's Book of the Table the 

 following quotation occurs from Abercrombie: ** Pliysicians concur in plac- 



