VI.] TESTING OF VARIETIES. 173 



one reason why so many disappointing varieties are 

 introduced. And besides this, the variety may behave 

 differently in different seasons, and in every various soil 

 and treatment. The emphatic impression of this fact 

 upon my mind was the only good result which came 

 of my first test of strawberries. Over forty varieties 

 were grown, and I made the most conscientious attempt 

 not only to make notes upon productiveness and be- 

 havior, but to personally eat every kind. I ate across 

 the patch north and south, east and west, backwards 

 and forwards. The results of the whole test were duly 

 published; whereupon a neighbor three miles away said 

 it might all be very well, but the varieties did not 

 behave that way with him! 



What the farmer wants to know is the value of the 

 variety upon his place, not upon the experiment station 

 farm, and he is the only person who can find it out. To 

 thoroughly test a variety is to introduce it. When it is 

 once introduced, the general consensus of opinion of 

 men who actually grow it for the purposes for which it 

 is desired, forms the best and the only criterion of its 

 value. Even then there may be farms, as every horti- 

 culturist knows, upon which a variety which is generally 

 condemned may succeed ; and the variety is then not a 

 failure.C^-^ Now, the discovering of this consensus of 

 opinion, and publishing it, is just the work which the 

 experiment station can perform when it desires to spread 

 information of varieties. The standard of actual sales 

 in commercial plantations is the only correct one for 

 market fruits, and this is to be had only from farmers 

 themselves. A series of tabulated reports from growers 

 who are capable judges of particular fruits is compe- 

 tent to give reliable information of varieties. If, in con- 



