STATE HORTICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 59 



without books and pictures is only a little worse than living in the 

 country without fruits and flowers. Some perhaps have the delusion 

 that small fruits are as difficult to raise as orchards. They class them 

 with hot-house grapes. Others think they need so little attention 

 they can stick a few plants in hard, poor ground and leave them to 

 their fate; one might as well raise canary birds and kittens together 

 as strawberries and weeds. There is a large class who believe in 

 small fruits and know their value. They enjoy them amazingly at a 

 friend's table and even buy some when they are cheap. 



A little greater outlay, and a little intelligent effort would give 

 them an abundant supply from their own grounds. But they usually 

 go on from bad to worse until like their neglected strawberry beds 

 they are turned under. 



Some of you would like to have a list of varieties of strawberries 

 which would be sure to meet all the recommendations of the dis- 

 seminators. But in my own experience it is an almost utter failure 

 to find in the different varieties all the superior qualities and 

 adaptations which are claimed. Don't be too fast in discarding older 

 and tried varieties for the newer and untried. I will not undertake 

 to give you any suggestions as to what is best for you to plant. But 

 when you do undertake to raise a bed of strawberries either for your 

 own family use or for the market, prepare your ground with great 

 €are by having it well plowed and dragged, and by enriching it heavily. 

 By close attention and good cultivation you will be able to get the 

 cream or the only paying crop the first year, by forcing them in this 

 manner. 



I have never seen a bed of strawberries which I really thought paid 

 the outlay of labor by endeavoring to revive it to the vigor and pro- 

 ductiveness of the first year; better plow them under and cultivate 

 the land for some succeeding crop. At this time of the year our only 

 fruit which has ripened and once more graces our tables is so pleasing 

 to our tastes, we are liable to want to dwell too long on the subject. 



But what has been said of the strawberry, one of our most popular 

 fruits, the principles of thorough preparation of the soil, culture, etc., 

 apply equally to the other small fruits. Like the strawberry the 

 raspberry is well connected. It also belongs to the rose family, and 

 by many even preferred to all others. All people seem to have a feel- 

 ing sense of the spines or thorns of this plant, as may be gathered 

 from its name in different languages, as in German "kratsbarre" or 

 scratchberry. While it is true that the raspberry in various forms is 



