CHAPTER XIII. 



WHAT SHALL \VE PLANT? VARIETIES, THEIR CHAR.\CTER AND 



ADAPTATION TO SOILS. 



T HAVE in my library an admirable little treatise written 

 ■^ by the late R. G. Pardee, and printed twenty-five years 

 ago. While the greater part of what he says, relating to the 

 requirements of the plant and its culture, is substantially cor- 

 rect, his somewhat extended list of varieties is almost wholly 

 obsolete. With the exception of Hovey's Seedling, scarcely 

 one can be found in a modern catalogue. Even carefully 

 prepared lists, made at a much later date, contain the names 

 of but few kinds now seen in the garden or market. I have 

 before me the catalogue of Prince & Co., pubUshed in 1865, 

 and out of their list of 169 varieties but three are now in 

 general cultivation, and the great majority are utterly un- 

 known. Thus it would seem that a catalogue soon becomes 

 historical, and that the kinds most heralded to-day may 

 exist only in name but a few years hence. The reasons can 

 readily be given. The convex heart of every strawberry 

 blossom will be found to consist of pistils, and usually of 

 stamens ranged around them. When both stamens and pis- 

 tils are found in the same blossom, as is the case with most 

 varieties, it is called a perfect flower, or staminate. In rare 

 instances, strawberry flowers are found which possess sta- 

 mens without pistils, and these are called male blossoms ; 

 far more often varieties exist producing pistils only, and 



