52 SUCCESS WITH SMALL FRUITS. 



differed greatly from its parent. Be this as it may, it is 

 said to be the first improved variety of which there is any 

 record. 



Early in the 17 th century, intercourse with this continent 

 led to the introduction of the most valuable species in ex- 

 istence, the Virginian strawberry {Fragaria Virgmiana) ^ 

 which grows wild from the Arctic regions to Florida, and 

 westward to the Rocky Mountains. It is first named in the 

 catalogue of Jean Robin, botanist to Louis XIII., in 1624. 

 During the first century of its career in England, it was not 

 appreciated, but as its wonderful capacity for variation and 

 improvement — in which it formed so marked a contrast to 

 the Wood strawberry — was discovered, it began to receive 

 the attention it deserved. English gardeners learned the 

 fact, of which we are making so much to-day, that by sim- 

 ply sowing its seeds, new and possibly better varieties could 

 be produced. From that time and forward, the tendency 

 has increased to originate, name, and send out innumera- 

 ble seedlings, the majority of which soon pass into oblivion, 

 while a few survive and become popular, usually in propor- 

 tion to their merit. 



The Fragaria Virginiana, therefore, the common wild 

 strawberry that is found in all parts of North America east 

 of the Rocky Mountains, is the parent of nine-tenths of the 

 varieties grown in our gardens ; and its improved descend- 

 ants furnish nearly all of the strawberries of our markets. 

 As we have seen, the Fragaria vesca, or the Alpine species 

 of Europe, is substantially the same to-day as it was a thou- 

 sand years ago. But the capacity of the Virginian straw- 

 berry for change and improvement is shown by those great 

 landmarks in the American culture of this fruit, — the pro- 

 duction of Hovey's Seedling by C. M. Hovey, of Cambridge, 

 Mass., forty-five years since ; of the Wilson's Albany Seed- 



