200 OUR COMMON FRUITS. 



improvement and turn it to the best account, the village 

 of Yille du Bois became a village of strawberry-growers. 

 Such is the received tradition concerning the affair, and 

 all that could be elicited, when, at the request of M. Du- 

 chesne, the author of the elaborate Histoire Naturelle du 

 Fraisier, the cure of the place went through every canton, 

 questioning all the oldest inhabitants as to the particulars; 

 for as to the exact epoch when or locality where the plant 

 originated, nothing positive could be ascertained a fact 

 not much to be wondered at, seeing that the event took 

 place about 250 years before. The villagers remained con- 

 stant to their first love for nearly a century, but in 1780 

 abandoned it, and turned their attention to the vine, to 

 which they have ever since devoted themselves. A taste 

 for strawberry culture had, however, by this time spread 

 through the neighbourhood ; adjacent villages adopted 

 the poor plants when thus cast out from their natal place, 

 and it is still to the nurseries in this vicinity that gar- 

 deners repair to supply themselves w r ith the finest plants. 

 The demand for them is continual ; for, although all old 

 plants are destroyed every third year and replaced by 

 their own runners, even these, too, being always trans- 

 planted to a different spot, yet in the ninth, or even some- 

 times in the sixth, year, it is found necessary to clear out 

 every root and branch, and bring in an entirely new stock 

 fresh from, the original head-quarters of the race. It is 

 at Montreuil principally that 1 fruit of this kind is grown 

 to supply the Paris market, and it is. therefore from this 

 place that its best-known name is derived, for the system 

 of " Every Gardener his own Sponsor " has been carried 

 in this instance to such an extent that Du Hamel says 

 the number of synonymes for this variety is "terrible;" 

 but the Parisian, who knows that the best strawberry he 

 buys has been brought thence, simply settles the matter 

 by calling it the Montreuil Strawberry. The largest, 

 figured in the J^ouveau du Hamel, measures little more 

 than 1^ in. in diameter. 



The lineage of the next notable French strawberry is 

 less involved in obscurity, for it was not, like that of 

 Montreuil, an ennobled native gradually risen above its 



