224 THE STRAWBERRY IN NORTH AMERICA 



been accorded to it hitherto, and would aid in detecting 

 synonyms.^ 



Value of variety tests. — The public is liable to take snap 

 judgment upon a new variety ; if it is reported unfavorably 

 by some authority, this condemns it in the minds of many 

 growers. "There is not a variety of strawberry in culti- 

 vation," said Thomas Meehan, "that has not, at some 

 time or other, been pronounced utterly worthless by some 

 competent authority." In 1860 the Wilson was voted 

 "unfit for cultivation" by the Massachusetts Horticul- 

 tural Society. For years the American Pomological So- 

 ciety was the recognized authority on the value of varieties. 

 A group of men from different parts of the United States 

 and Canada met every other year and voted upon varieties. 

 Some were "recommended for general cultivation," 

 others put "on trial " and others "rejected." For the 

 most part, these men voiced merely experience w^ith 

 varieties in their own localities, yet their recommendations 

 covered great districts, perhaps including several States. 

 This broadside method of determining the value of 

 varieties was serviceable in the formative years of North 

 American horticulture ; now it is superseded by the more 

 local reports from State experiment stations. State horti- 

 cultural societies and numerous other agencies. 



Many have supposed that the judgments of the experi- 

 ment stations should be considered final and varieties ac- 

 cepted or rejected according to their behavior on the station 

 test plots. The fallacy of this view has been set forth by 

 L. H. Bailey: "What the farmer w^ants to know is the 



1 All of the over 1800 varieties of North American origin are 

 described in Technical Bulletin 11, Virginia Agricultural Ex- 

 periment Station, Blacksburg, Virginia: "North American 

 Varieties of the Strawberry," by S. W. Fletcher. 



