546 [Assembly 



thirty or forty years ago from Staten Island, and were every- 

 where preferred to the wikl ones, on account of their perfect 

 figure, large size and ripeness ; they brought more than double 

 the price of the wild ones. 



Professor Mapes said that Mr. Morton, of Newark, had culti- 

 vated them very successfully. The professor mentioned a new 

 mode of growing strawberries, that was by using short pieces of 

 slabs to lay across a bed of strawberries, with notches cut in the 

 edges large enough to permit the strawberry plant to come- 

 through. The slabs were laid with their flat side down. The 

 rain was therefore carried down the sides of each slab to the 

 strawberries. No weeds could grow, and the fruit was thrifty. 



Mr. Riggs, of Baltimore, observed that the method had one 

 great advantage, that of keeping the fruit free from the sand. 



Wm. J. King was requested to speak of a new strawberry, and 

 he said that Jenney's seedling now stands number one in Boston, 

 for certain qualities it possesses. The confectioners prefer it to 

 any other in the Boston market on account especially of its great 

 tenderness and amount of juice, which is double that of Hovey's 

 seedling, and considered to be better than that, but not near as 

 large. It is a good bearer, continuing to bear until fall — thus 

 afibrding many pickings. Mr. Jenney sells all the plants he can 

 raise ; he is a modest man, and has said little about it. 



Prof. Mapes. — Raspberries are common to both Europe and 

 America, and are found in a variety of forms. It is a deciduous 

 shrub, its leaves are primate and composed of five leaflets, its 

 flowers are in panicles, its roots perennial, its top triennial, and 

 it produces its fruit on the wood of the former year. The large 

 fruited kind have all emanated from the Rubus Idceus, or Mount 

 Ida bramble, and is now naturalized to most parts of the United 

 States. The thimbleberry, or common blackberry, is to be found 

 wild in our wood, Rubus occidentalis, and the red raspberry, 

 Rubus strigosus, of Michaux. Some kinds grow prostrate others 

 of upright, rising to the height of several feet, and are biennial 

 in duration ; but the root is perennial, producing suckers which 

 ripen and drop their leaves one year, and resume their foliage, 



