Originating New Varieties Hybridization. 157 



gave the subject so little attention. Every fruit catalogue states which are 

 pistillates, and their need of a perfect- flowering kind near them. Again, 

 it is urged that this necessary proximity of two kinds leads to mixtures. 

 It need not, and, with the plant grower, can only result from gross careless- 

 ness. The different beds may be yards apart. In order to secure 

 thorough fertilization, it is not at all necessary to plant so near that the 

 two kinds can run together. In a large field of pistillates, every tenth row 

 should be of a staminate, blossoming at the same time with the pistillate. 

 The Kentucky seedling is a first-class staminate, but it should not be used 

 to fertilize the Crescent, since the latter would almost be out of bloom 

 before the former began to blossom. Plant early pistillates with early 

 staminates, and late with late. 



Many ask me, " Do strawberries mix by being planted near each 

 other ? " They mix only by running together, so that you can scarcely 

 distinguish the two kinds ; but a Wilson plant will produce Wilson runners 

 to the end of time, and were one plant surrounded by a million other 

 varieties, it would still maintain the Wilson characteristics. It is through 

 the seeds, and seeds only, that one variety has any appreciable effect upon 

 another. Many have confused ideas on this point. 



A man brought to the Centennial Exhibition, at Philadelphia, a pot of 

 strawberries that attracted great attention, for the fruit was magnificent. 

 I suggested to him that it resembled the Jucunda, and he said that it was 

 a cross between that berry and the Seth Boyden. This was a combination 

 that promised so well that I went twenty miles, on a very hot day, to see 

 his bed, and found that the crossing was simply the interlacing of the 

 runners of the two distinct varieties, and that I could tell the intermingled 

 Jucunda and Boyden plants apart at a glance. Such crossing would make 

 no marked change in varieties if continued for centuries. 



The enemies and diseases of the strawberry will be grouped in a 

 general chapter on these subjects. 



