BREEDING HARDY STRAWBERRIES AND RASPBERRIES. 



BREEDING HARDY STRAWBERRIES AND 

 RASPBERRIES. 



251 



PROF. N. E. HANSEN, BROOKINGS, SOUTH DAKOTA. 

 (Refer back to article on page 193.) 



I believe I will begin wath Mr. Underwood's statement and try 

 to reconcile the points of difference between Mr. Underwood and 

 Mr. Cook. But the fact is there is no difference between the two. 

 Look at the matter from a historical basis. Whence came our 

 strawberries? From South America. If you will look back over 

 the history of the subject you will find that American strawber- 

 ries date back about to the year 1834, when Hovey Seedling ap- 

 peared. Mr. Hovey had a strawberry from South America, very 

 large, apt to be hollow, rather flavorless, of a high color, better to 

 look at than to eat, and he also had the real wild berry of Massa- 

 chusetts, and he got a number of seedlings with wild blood in them. 



Prof. N. E. Hansen and staff of assistants in plant breeding work, May, 1906. "You see 

 it takes myself and good helpers to handle seedlings by the hundred thousand." 



The modern strawberry came originally from South America, and 

 there now is little trace of native eastern blood apparent in them, 

 and also little of the western type. Now that we know it's origin, 

 we have been barking on the wrong track. We have no hardiness 

 to begin with ; it is mainly South American blood. 



Now the question arises, what is hardiness? That is a question 

 that has not yet been solved. It is something inherent in the nature 

 of the plant and has been there thousands of years. Some of the 

 discussion on fruit seedlings is something like a kitten chasing its 



