164 THE STRAWBERRY IN NORTH AMERICA 



ries are too tender to ship. Some berries have been grown 

 over four inches in diameter, showing the possibilities in 

 this direction; but commercial berries are rarely over 

 two inches in diameter, even for a special trade, and the 

 average size is one inch. Marshall P. Wilder remarked, 

 "We already have strawberries sufficiently large to fill 

 any mouth of decent dimensions." 



Records of "mammoth'' berries. — These have not been 

 confined to this generation. In 1613 the "Hortus Eystet- 

 tensis" reported berries one and three-eighths inches in 

 diameter. In 1708 Simon Paullus, a Dane, published 

 his " Quadripartitum Botanicum" in which he claims to 

 have seen strawberries "of the kind Bauhin called prune- 

 sized, which produced a fruit nearly the size of the peach." 

 Probably this was the Chili, which Frezier reported, in 

 1712, as bearing berries "the size of hen's eggs." In 1830 

 the Fruit Committee of the Pennsylvania Horticultural 

 Society awarded a silver medal to Daniel Kochersperger, 

 " for the production of the largest strawberries — sixty of 

 which fill a quart, and measuring four inches round, less 

 one sixteenth of an inch." ^ The same year J. Buel re- 

 ported in the Albany (N. Y.) Argus, that he had picked 

 "a pail of strawberries which had an average circumfer- 

 ence of three inches each." Both of the foregoing records 

 were for varieties of F. virginiana. 



The Hovey was the first of the large-fruited varieties 

 of North American origin. For many years it captured 

 most of the prizes at strawberry exhibitions because of 

 its size and beauty. In 1851 two notable records were 

 established with this variety. One was reported by A. J. 

 Downing : ^ " We understand that IVIr. Pell, at his cele- 



1 The Southern Agriculturist, III (1830), p. 446. 



2 The Horticulturist, 1851, p. 383. 



