FRUITS. VAEIETIES AND CULTURE. 433 



fruit clean. This fruit is fragrant, delicious, and univer- 

 sally esteemed. The first offering of the season, in the way 

 of ripe fruit, nothing that comes after it can excel " a dish 

 of ripe strawberries smothered in cream," or fresh from 

 the plant. It is, indeed, the most popular and wholesome 

 of all the small fruits ; for, besides its grateful flavor, the 

 sub-acid juice has a cooling quality peculiarly acceptable 

 in summer. In addition to its excellence for the dessert, 

 it is a favorite fruit for making jams, ices, jellies, and 

 preserves. 



The English wood strawberry was the first brought 

 into cultivation. Says old Tusser, turning over its culti- 

 vation to the ladies, as beneath his attention : 



" Wife, unto the garden, and set me a plot 

 With strawberry plants, the best to be got, 

 Such growing abroad, amid trees in the wood, 

 Well chosen and picked, prove excellent good." 



Plants taken directly from the field into the garden yield 

 at once a tolerable crop. This climate is well adapted to 

 the culture of this fruit, since by giving the plants a due 

 supply of moisture, fruit can be gathered the greater part 

 of the summer and autumn. 



In its natural state, the strawberry generally produces 

 perfect or hermaphrodite flowers ; the hermaphrodite are 

 those which have both the stamens and pistils so well de- 

 veloped as to produce a tolerably fair crop of fruit. Cul- 

 tivation has so affected the strawberry in this respect, 

 that there are now three classes of varieties. First, those 

 in which the male or staminate organs are always perfect ; 

 but the female, or pistillate organs, are so defective that 

 they will very rarely bear perfect fruit. Those are called 

 staminate. Second, those in which the female, or pistil- 

 late organs, are perfect ; but in which the male organs are 

 generally so defective that they cannot produce fruit at 

 all, unless in the neighborhood of, and fertilized by, stam- 

 inate or hermaphrodite plants. Impregnated by these, 

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