276 



THE STRAWBERRRY CONTROVERSY. 



under the bandage, we managed to make 

 very clever guesses of how many lilv fingers 

 some roguish lassie was holding in tempt- 

 ing sjiow before our bandaged eyes ; but 

 some folks are not half so lucky with both 

 eyes wide open, and the stamens and pistils 

 standing before them. 



If such latitude is permitted to those who 

 conduct the investigations peculiar to hor- 

 ticulture, who can confide in the publica- 

 tion of facts, observations or experiments ? 

 Of what use will be journals and magazines? 

 They become like chronometers that will 

 not keep time — like a compass that has lost 

 its magnetic sensibility — like a guide who 

 has lost his own way, and leads his follow- 

 ers through brake, and morass, and thicket, 

 into interminable wanderings. Sometimes 

 the consciousness of faults in ourselves, 

 which should make us lenient towards 

 others, only serves to produce irritable fault- 

 finding. After a comparison of opinions and 

 facts, through a space of five years, with 

 the most distinguished cultivators, east and 

 west, Mr. Longworth is now universally 

 admitted to have sustained himself in all the 

 essential points which he first promulgated, 

 not discovered, for he made no claim of that 

 sort. The gardeners and the magazines of 

 the east have, at length, adopted his prac- 

 tical views, after having stoutly, many of 

 them, contested them. 



It was, therefore, with unfeigned surprise, 

 that we read Mr. Hovey's latest remarks in 

 the September number of his Magazine, 

 in which, with some asperity, he roundly 

 charges Mr. Longworth with manifold er- 

 rors, and treats him with a contempt, which 

 would lead one, ignorant of the controversy, 

 to suppose that Mr. Hovey had never made 

 a mistake, and that Mr. Longworth. had 

 been particularly fertile of them. Thus, 

 "Mr. Longworth's remarks abound in so 

 many errors and inconsistencies, that we 

 shall scarcely expect to notice all." "An- 

 other gross assertion" &c. Referring to 

 another topic, he says, " This question, we 

 therefore consider as satisfactorily settled, 

 without discussing Mr. Longwoi-th's con- 

 flicting views about male and female Keen." 

 This somewhat tragical comedy is now 

 nearly phyed out, and we have spoken a 

 word just before the fall of the curtain, be- 



' cause as chroniclers of events and critics <f 

 horticultural literature and learning, it 

 seemed no less than our duty. We have 

 highly appreciated Mr. Hovey's various ex- 

 ertions for the promotion of the art and sci- 

 ence of horticulture, nor will his manifest 

 errors and short-comings in this particular 

 instance, disincline us to receive from his 

 pen whatever is good. 



We hope that our remarks will not be 

 construed as a defence of western men or 

 western theories, but as a defence of the 

 truth and of one who has truly expounded 

 it, though in this case the theory and its 

 defender happen to be of western origin. 

 Whatever errors have crept into Mr. Long- 

 worth's remarks should be faithfully ex- 

 purgated, and perhaps it may be Mr. 

 Hovey's duty to perform the lustration. 

 If so, courtesy would seem to require that 

 it should be done with some consciousness 

 that through this whole controversy, Mr. 

 Longworth is now admitted to have been 

 right in all essential matters, and if in er- 

 ror at all, only in minor particulars ; while 

 Mr. Hovey, in all the controversy, in res- 

 pect to the plainest facts, has been changing 

 from wrong to right, from right to wrong, 

 and from wrong back to right again. We 

 do not think that the admirable benefits 

 which Mr. Longworth has conferred upon 

 the whole community, by urging the im- 

 proved method of cultivating the stra\<^ber- 

 ry, have been adequately appreciated. We 

 still less like to see gratitude expressed in 

 the shape of snarling gibes and petty cavils. 



We will close these remarks by the cor- 

 rection of a matter which Mr. Downing 

 states. While he assents to all ihe practical 

 aspects of Mr. Longworth's views, he dis- 

 sents to some matters of fact and philosophy, 

 and among others, to the fact that Hovey's 

 seedling is nhcays and only a pistillate 

 plant. He thinks that originally it had 

 perfect flowers, but that after bearing twice 

 or thrice on the same roots, the plants de- 

 generate, and become either pistillate or 

 staminate. He says, " Hovey's seedling 

 strawberry, at first, was a perfect sort in its 

 flower, but at this moment, more than half 

 the plants in this country have become pis- 

 tillate. 



Mr. Hovey himself states the contrary, 



