THE SMALL FRUITS OF NEW YORK 1 85 



I have examined many works with a view to ascertain if there ever has 

 been any improvement on the well-known wild varieties, but without 

 success. The Double Flowering, Dwarf or Dewberry, American Upright, 

 and the White Fruited, are all that are named. The Dewberry is the first 

 to ripen, and the best flavored fruit. The White Fruited seems to be cul- 

 tivated as a novelty more than for fruit. The Upright variety fruits late 

 in the season, is of vigorous growth, and tmder favorable circumstances 

 produces large, mulberry-shaped berries, but the seeds are not thickly 

 imbedded in the pulp, and are so abimdant as to impair materially the 

 quality of the fruit. The blackberry seems to adhere to its original char- 

 acter with singular tenacity; or, from the many millions of plants which 

 spring up from seeds annually distributed in almost every diversity of 

 climate and soil, we should constantly find new varieties. Improving the 

 wild plant by careful cultivation is one thing; to produce a new variety is 

 another. The fruit now before you I believe to be of the last-named 

 character. It is not like the Dewberry, or long and mulberry-shaped like 

 the Upright blackberry, and the seeds are so imbedded in a rich pulp as hardly 

 to be noticed. I think in shape and size they compare very well with the 

 Hovey Seedling strawberry. The New Rochelle blackberry sends up annually 

 large and vigorous shoots with lateral branches, all of which, imder common 

 cultivation, will be crowded with fine fruit, a portion of which ripens daily 

 in moist seasons for six weeks, commencing about the middle of July. 

 They are perfectly hardy, always thrifty and productive, and I have not 

 foiind them liable to blight or injury by insects.' " 



Accompanying the account was a large basket of the new blackberry, 

 many of which, according to the reporter of the meeting, who evidently 

 had a vivid imagination, were three or four inches in circumference. But 

 at any rate the fruit and the talk of the introducer so pleased the club that 

 they voted to change the name of the berry from AVct' Rochelle to Lawton, 

 an action provocative of great agitation in the two leading horticultural 

 organizations of the country for over a decade. The Western New York 

 Horticultiiral Society held that the first name, New Rochelle, should stand 

 in accordance with the rule of priority, and in 1856 a formal vote was 

 passed to emphasize its position. Later, in the same year, the American 

 Pomological Society voted that the berry should be called Lawton. Might 

 not right prevailed, and more and more the berry became known as Lawton. 

 It remains to be said that for twenty years following its introduction. Law- 

 ton was the leading blackberry of the coimtry, displaced in popularity by 

 Kittatinny in the early seventies. 



The history of the Dorchester, first named among its kind, is scarcely 

 less complicated than that of the Lawton. Two men are credited with its 



