The Strawberry Book. 55 



indifferent, for where we have so many good kinds we 

 need not trouble ourselves about a merely tolerable straw- 

 berry. Dr. Johnson's question, addressed to Boswell, 

 " Sir, how can you eat a tolerable egg," may well be 

 transferred to strawberries. 



For market culture the list of good kinds must neces- 

 sarily be somewhat limited. It is not easy to find all the 

 characteristics of a good market berry united in one kind. 

 The plant must be hardy, vigorous, and an abundant 

 bearer, or else it is not worth growing ; the fruit must be 

 large, handsome, and, if possible, sweet, and of good 

 flavor. But absence of flavor or presence of acid will 

 not prevent a variety, good in other regards, from being 

 popular in the market. Witness the Wilson, of which, 

 sour and poor as it is, sixty-four hundred quarts have been 

 raised on five eighths of an acre. 



Many kinds too numerous to detail have struggled hard 

 to get and hold a place among market varieties, but have 

 failed from one reason and another, for the capabilities of 

 a strawberry are put to a hard test when it is raised for 

 the market. If it has a weak side it will surely show it 

 under the searching trial it has to pass. Perhaps as good 

 a list of market kinds as can be made would comprise 

 Jenny Lind, Hovey, Wilson, the Brighton Pine, Jucunda, 

 and Triomphe cle Gand. I can see that many readers will 

 object to more than one kind here, but yet I believe that 

 that is as good an average as can be struck. In Massa- 

 chusetts, after a review of last year's market, we are 

 tempted to add the Lady of the Lake to this list, for it is 

 a good market berry here, and overwhelmingly productive 

 on certain soils. 



I do not give merely my own opinion, which might 

 not be worth much, but that of experienced cultivators 

 and growers, who have seen many new seedlings rise and 

 fall, when I say that the President Wilder will undoubt- 

 edly become a standard market variety. It has all the 



