408 THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNLIKE. [XXV. 



fruited in 1836. These were the Hovey and Boston 

 Pine. Owing to the loss of labels, it is not certain 

 which crosses gave these varieties, but Mr. Hovey 

 was always confident that the Hovey sprung from 

 Mulberry crossed by Keen's Seedling. The Hovey 

 strawberry revolutionized strawberry growing in this 

 country. It was to America what Keen's Seedling was 

 to England ; and it marks the second epoch in com- 

 mercial strawberry culture. American varieties now 

 appeared from year to year, and the greater part of 

 them have come directly or indirectly from the Hovey 

 and the Boston Pine. With the passing out of the 

 Boston Pine and its immediate offspring, the term 

 Pine has practically been lost to American strawberry 

 literature, and the word is but a memory in the minds 

 of the older men ; but this is not because the class 

 itself has disappeared, but, on the contrary, because 

 it has become the dominant class and has driven out 

 the Scarlet and all other competitors. The Hovey was 

 a true Pine strawberry. Mr. Hovey grew it in his 

 garden till the last, and it was my good fortune to 

 secure a few plants of him shortly before his death, 

 A plant is now before me as I write, and it has all 

 the marks of the old Pine or Grandiflora type, — the 

 thick, rounded, dark leaves, stocky habit, stiff flower 

 cluster, and large, spreading calyx. Practically all our 

 commercial strawberries are Pines, and they compare 

 well in botanical characters with the Fragaria grandi- 

 flora of the French gardens of a half century ago, and 

 with the famous Bath Scarlet and Pitmaston Black, 

 which were important Pines when Barnet wrote, spec- 

 imens of all of which I have before me. 



Our strawberries, then, are lineal descendants of 



