ORIGIN AND BOTANY 133 



determine from what species the garden strawberry has 

 sprung by making comparative studies in anatomy, yet 

 this has not given conclusive results. The genus Fragaria 

 is a most flexible and unstable group of plants. Botanists 

 rarely agree upon the limits of a species. Some would 

 make several species out of the group of plants known 

 loosely as F. mrginiana. 



A large proportion of the seedlings resulting from a 

 strawberry cross tend to revert to a more primitive type ; 

 usually over ninety per cent of them are inferior to either 

 parent. In 1886 E. Lewis Sturtevant reported his ob- 

 servations on this point. ^ "The modern varieties under 

 American culture seem to belong mostly to the species rep- 

 resented in nature by F. virginiana, although there are 

 supposed hybridizations with F. chiloensis, and, in the high 

 flavored class, with F. elatior. Certain it is that in grow- 

 ing seedlings from our improved varieties reversions often 

 occur to varieties referable to the Hautbois and Chilean 

 sorts, from which fact hybridization can be inferred. I 

 have noticed as of common occurrence that seedlings from 

 high flavored varieties are very likely to furnish some 

 plants of the Hautbois class and scarcely if at all distin- 

 guishable from named varieties of the Hautbois with 

 which there has been opportunity for close comparison. 

 From large berries of diminished flavor and which occa- 

 sionally throw hollow berries the reversion occasionally 

 produces plants unmistakably of the Chilean type. In 

 other cases we have noticed reversions to forms of F. vesca. 

 These circumstances all lead towards establishing the 

 mingled parentage of our varieties under cultivation." 

 This conclusion agrees with that of Richardson, previously 

 quoted, (page 121), that the modern strawberry is a com- 

 1 Trans. Mass. Hort. Soc, 1888, pp. 191-204. 



