110 APPENDIX. 
the strawberry. I will, in a day or two, send youa 
Report of our Strawberry Committee, written by Dr. 
Warder, on Mr. Meehan’s doctrine of changing a pis- 
tillate to a staminate plant. Mr. Meehan finds plants 
that he took from what was called a bed of Hovey’s 
Seedling, and had nearly all proved staminates or 
hermaphrodites. Dr. Warder and Mr. Heath, of our 
city, saw his plants, and found about one Hovey to 
the hundred. The Hovey is so strongly marked, that 
our children can distinguish the plant from all others. 
Mr. Meehan never heard of a pistillate plant till he 
came to America. I sent some of our seedlings to the 
President of the London Horticultural Society last 
winter, and among them pistillates. He replied that 
he was not aware that there were plants that would 
not bear fruit without impregnation, and suggested 
that the failure to bear, he presumed, was from frost. 
He promised to investigate the subject. Mr. Hunts- 
man, of Flushing, Long Island, is a botanist, and has 
given great attention to the cultivation and sexes of 
the plant. From the stem and leaf he can designate 
some fifty varieties that he has had in cultivation. I 
would recommend you to get his views. It is singu- 
lar that after public attention has been brought to 
the question for twenty years or more, even botan- 
ists and horticultural editors deny the doctrine. If 
generally understood, the discovery of the ignorant 
market-gardener is worth millions of dollars. After 
I had made the discovery, from a chance obser- 
vation of a son of Mr. Abergust, I was at the gardens 
of persons near the city of Philadelphia, where 
Mr. Abergust resided, prior to his removal to Cin- 
