FRUITS AND FLOWERS. 299 



Burned clay is good on heavy soil, applied in any way, and 

 roasted turf, pounded fine, is excellent top-dressing for straw- 

 berry beds on any soil. Liberal applications of stable manures 

 are recommended by some cultivators, but I do not make much 

 use of them, or other manures containing an excess of ammo- 

 nia. I have tried glue grounds, (refuse from a glue factory,) 

 trenching in very deeply, and have thus obtained large crops of 

 very fine strawberries ; but the prodigious growth of runners 

 and vines caused much labor in clipping and thinning, and by 

 this very excess of growth the ground was soon rendered unpro- 

 ductive for either plants or fruit. Fish compost gave similar 

 results. 



5. Select the best varieties, not only with reference to the use 

 you intend to make of them, but also to the kind of soil you 

 intend to grow them on. So many " new " and " very supe- 

 rior " sorts have so lately been introduced that it is difficult to 

 make a selection. If we give equal credit to descriptions in 

 the advertisements of the various kinds raised here, or imported 

 from Europe, and buy accordingly, we shall soon find ourselves 

 in possession of at least one hundred and forty " best kinds ! " 

 It will be quite as safe and much more profitable, to make plan- 

 tations of a few good and well tried sorts. I would not dis- 

 courage any from trying new varieties when they come well 

 recommended, for if one kind more valuable can be obtained in 

 twenty it will pay perhaps to buy twenty kinds to get it. But 

 cultivators who learn with surprise that they can occasionally 

 produce strawberries five inches or more in circumference, need 

 not therefore believe that this or that new variety will bear 

 every year an immense number of berries of the first quality, 

 each half as large as his fist. In selecting varieties not fully 

 tested it is well to remember that pistillate sorts bear much 

 more uniformly than hermaphrodites, and that the more fully 

 the stamens arc developed the less likely they are to produce 

 full crops. Very few of the large hermaphrodites bear uni- 

 formly and well, and most of the exceedingly large varieties 

 are of that class, or approaching the staminate. 



It is not necessary for me to give full descriptions of the dif- 

 ferent varieties which have been found suitable for market or 

 garden culture, as fruit books and horticultural journals fur- 



