PACKAGES, TRAINING, POLLINATION 103 



He concluded : " If varieties of the Pine are allowed to 

 bear twice or more on the same roots, they will degenerate 

 into pistillate or staminate forms. The staminate or 

 pistillate forms once reached, we are inclined to think 

 from experiments we have made, that it is permanent. 

 Hovey's Seedling at first was a perfect sort in its flower, 

 but at this moment (1847) more than half of the plants 

 in the country have become pistillate." Downing com- 

 bated the recommendation of Longworth, "of always 

 making a plantation with a certain proportion of what he 

 terms male plants — the only use of which is to supply 

 stamens or pollen to the other imperfect plants. The 

 true course is not to waste the ground by putting out 

 barren or male plants, but carefully to select, when there 

 is any tendency to sterility, only runners from the most 

 fruitful perfect plants. In this way good plantations 

 will be secured, with every plant productive." 



While Downing's theory that varieties of strawberries 

 change in sex under cultivation was a fallacy, in the main, 

 there is enough confirmatory evidence to make it seem 

 plausible. Few pistillate varieties are absolutely devoid 

 of stamens and produce no pollen whatever. The Hovey 

 belonged to the large group of pistillates that normally 

 have very small stamens and, as a rule, do not produce 

 a suflficient amount of pollen to properly fertilize the 

 blossoms. Hovey said his seedling "had both pistils 

 and stamens, the latter quite short and hidden under the 

 receptacle." When these varieties are planted in rich 

 soil they tend to become more nearly staminate. When 

 Thomas Meehan planted pistillate varieties in pots and 

 forced them in the greenhouse, many of the blossoms 

 were staminate. This convinced him that sex in the 

 strawberry is "merely a matter of nutrition." He 



