416 THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNLIKE. LXXV. 



berries. No one can examine the excellent colored 

 pictures of Keen's berries,* and other early varieties, 

 without being struck by the thick, blue -bottomed 

 leaves and wide -spreading, arm-like trusses, — indis- 

 putable marks of Fragaria Chiloensis. 



Yet, despite these important botanical differences, 

 the garden berries and the native Illinoensis are 

 much alike, as I have said ; and this similarity is 

 really one of the arguments in support of a different 

 geographical origin of the two. Similar climates or 

 environments produce similar results, and when old 

 berry fields are allowed to run wild, the plants do 

 not revert to the type of the Chilian species, but are 

 modified rather more in the direction of the indige- 

 nous plant. In the fall, when the flower trusses are 

 gone and growth has ceased, it is sometimes almost 

 impossible to distinguish between the leaves of spon- 

 taneous garden berries and wild Illinoensis ; but the 

 flower clusters the following spring will be likely to 

 distinguish the two. As a matter of fact, garden 

 berries probably do not often persist long when run 

 wild. They are unable to contend with the grass and 

 weeds, although Illinoensis may find in similar cir- 

 cumstances an acceptable foothold. It is not strange, 

 therefore, that those individuals from the old culti- 

 vated beds which longest persist should be those 

 nearest like the native berries, for such would fit 

 most perfectly into the feral conditions. 



There is only one conclusion, therefore, which 

 fully satisfies all the demands of history, philosophy, 

 and botanical evidence, and this is that the garden 



*See, for instance, the plate of Keen's Seedling in Trans. London Hort. Soc 

 261. 



