AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 2S5 



humidity and heat are present. Mr. Peabody uses irrigation, and 

 Burr's new pine always bears a second crop. Strawberries may 

 be raised here in the liot months if irrigation be not neglected. 

 As to neat crops of strawberries, it is utterly impossible for any 

 hermaphrodite strawberry plant to be very productive. The 

 female plant is more so, fruit is its more particular character. 

 A plant that has to make two sexual secretions is soon exhausted, 

 such is the case with the hermaphrodite plant, but not with the 

 female. 



Mr. Pardee had counted 260, and in another instance 180 

 berries on a staminate plant, and saw many others as equally 

 productive. It was Wilson's seedling He thought it might 

 challenge any pistillate plant. He had always previously 

 imagined tlie pistillate plant had the advantage. 



Mr. Prince said if the runners be cut off and the single plant 

 well isolated, any comparison would be fair; not otherwise. It 

 was not just to speak of a cluster, a bunch, a dozen plants. 

 Nature must have its course, the female plant has fewer flowers 

 on the fruit stalk, and the strength of the plant is reserved to be 

 developed in fruit. The plant, of which Mr. Pardee had spoken, 

 was staminate, and is an excellent plant, (Wilson's), yet it was 

 the character of a staminate plant to throw off many blossoms 

 and produce comparatively less fruit. They require expensive 

 culture, as single plants. Pistillate were the only class fit for 

 market culture. They might be allowed to run togetlier by the 

 acre. The " Crimson Cone," which chiefly supplies New-York, 

 was a pistillate plant. The staminate plants might be planted 

 anywhere. The sexuality of plants, especially of the strawberry, 

 was important. Linnseus had said that all strawberrys are her- 

 maphrodite. But he spoke only of two European varieties. All 

 the large strawberries now in Europe are chiefly from Virginia 

 and Chili. The varieties Linnaeus knew were both hermaphro- 

 dite. It had been said that change of sex in plants miglit be 

 effected by artificial process, as by warmth. This idea was 

 erroneous and absurd. 



Mr. Pardee would not argue against theories. But how was 

 the productiveness of the staminate Wilson's seedling to be 

 accounted for 1 Outbearlng by four times, the best pistillate ? 



