THE CURRANT. 159 



to contend with. Praising the strawberry is like 

 "painting the lily;" therefore let us give our 

 attention at once to the essential details of its 

 successful culture. 



As we have intimated before, this fruit as we find 

 it in our gardens, even though we raise foreign 

 kinds, came originally from America. The two 

 great species, Fragaria chilensis, found on the Pacific 

 slope from Oregon to Chili, and Fragaria virgi- 

 niana, growing wild in all parts of North America 

 east of the Rocky Mountains, are the sources of 

 all the fine varieties that have been named and 

 cultivated. The Alpine strawberry (Fragaria 

 vesca), which grows wild throughout the northern 

 hemisphere, does not appear capable of much 

 variation and development under cultivation. Its 

 seeds, sown under all possible conditions, repro- 

 duce the parent plant. Foreign gardeners eventu- 

 ally learned, however, that seeds of the Chili 

 and Virginia strawberry produced new varieties 

 which were often much better than their parents. 

 As time passed, and more attention was drawn 

 to this subject, superb varieties were originated 

 abroad, many of them acquiring a wide celebrity. 

 In this case, as has been true of nearly all other 

 fruits, our nurserymen and fruit-growers first 

 looked to Europe for improved varieties. Horti- 

 culturists were slow to learn that in our own native 



