202 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



gain may arise through a heredity' influenced by long series of se- 

 lections. 3. Firmness of berry. My present knowledge does not 

 admit of my assigning a cause for this feature, unless it has been 

 gained through hybridization. 4. Flavor. This seems to be the 

 direct sequence of hybridization, in its more marked aspects : in 

 its lesser aspects it does not seem to exceed that which occurs be- 

 tween natural varieties. 5. Aspect. This seems to have been 

 acquired through the action of hybridization, when the influence 

 of one parent appears to have become predominant. The whole 

 subject of the in^uences noted and to be ascribed to hybridization 

 must be left b}'^ me for further study before I can hazard judg- 

 ment. 



In the present condition of horticultural associations, when more 

 interest is displayed in the commercial than in the scientific aspects 

 of research, future gain must come slOwly and unconsciously 

 through the chances that originate in numbers of attempts rather 

 than through design. Yet I cannot omit the expression of my 

 judgment that it is the duty of horticultural societies to foster 

 scientific studies by so much the more because their usefulness is 

 not as yet recognized by the mass of individual horticulturists. 

 Our societies, especially such flourishing ones as the Massachusetts 

 Horticultural, should insist upon methodical information being 

 secured at their exhibitions, and placed upon record. Confining 

 m}' attention here to the strawberry at the exhibitions of the 

 Massachusetts Horticultural Societj", in which I am proud to be 

 classed as a member, I would distinctly recommend that the weights 

 and measurements in two directions of the ten largest berries of 

 every variety that secures a prize, be entered upon the records. 

 I would further recommend that drawings made accurately, of full 

 size and properl}' colored, of the extreme variables of the variety 

 as well as of the berry considered as typical by the committee be 

 made each year from the first premium lot, and be filed so as at 

 the proper time to be bound into a volume and placed upon the 

 library shelves. I would also suggest the expediency of offering 

 premiums each year for not less than a certain number of her- 

 barium specimens of the varieties in bloom, the specimens to be 

 forwarded to the Herbarium at Cambridge for preservation. By 

 thus doing, material would gradually accumulate which would en- 

 able methodical study and wide generalization to be made to the 

 profit of horticultural advance, and we might reasonably hope to 



