A Family History, 205 



induced botanists to place it in a separate genus all 

 by itself. In reality, however, the peculiarity of the 

 fruit is an extremely slight one, very easily brought 

 about. In all other points— in its root, its leaf, its 

 stem, its flower, nay, even its silky hairs — the straw- 

 berry all but exactly reproduces the white potentilla. 

 It is nothing more than one of these potentillas with 

 a slight diversity in the way it forms its fruit. To 

 account, therefore, for the strawberry we had first to 

 account for the white potentilla from which it springs. 

 The white potentilla, or barren strawberry, you 

 will remember, is itself a slightly divergent form of 

 the yellow potentillas, such as the cinquefoil. From 

 these it differs in three chief particulars. In the first 

 place, it does not creep, but stands erect ; this is due 

 to its mode of life on banks or in open woods, not 

 among grass and meadows as is the case with the 

 straggling cinquefoil. In the second place, it has 

 three leaflets on each stalk instead of five, and this is 

 a slight variation of a sort liable to turn up at any 

 time in any plant, as the number of leaflets is very 

 seldom quite constant. In the third place, it has 

 white petals instead of yellow ones, and this is the 

 most important difference of any. All flowers with 

 bright and conspicuous petals we know are fertilised 

 by insects, which visit them in search of honey or 



