112 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



eighty-five foreign and one hundred and seventy American varieties, besides 

 more than a thousand seedlings, whose merits are yet to be tested. Two 

 hundred of these varieties are described in our present catalogue, and also 

 in the Agricultural Patent Office Report; and I may here assert, without a 

 possibility of contradiction, that the collection thus concentrated is supe- 

 rior to all the European collections combined. I do hope that this accumu- 

 lation of the Fragaria family may be perpetuated, and so soon as we shall 

 have a National Pomological Institute, for the culture of all the varieties 

 of fruits, I shall present my entire collection thereto for the purpose of an 

 universal free distribution. 



Of the twelve species of the Fragaria family found upon our globe, nine 

 of the species combine plants possessing two sexual divisions, and three 

 only produce what by some are termed perfect flowers, that is, combining 

 both sexual organs in each flower. 



All the six North American species, throughout their innumerable varie- 

 ties, comprise the two sexual varieties: first, bisexual or hermaphrodite 

 plants; second, pistillate or female plants; and no male plant has ever 

 been found native in North America. A quondam writer has stated that 

 no pistillate or female strawberry is found in a natural state, but that they 

 are garden monstrosities. So ignorant an assumption is scarcely worthy 

 of contradiction, when every forest proves the contrary. I will here sim- 

 ply remark, that if a pistillate plant is an abortion or lusus naturse, then 

 God and nature have most unaccountably failed in the formation of the 

 different species of the Fragaria, as nine out of the twelve species of straw- 

 berries that exist upon our globe combine plants with two sexual divisions, 

 and there remain consequently but three species, where nature was true to 

 herself ; and these three alone would present the form and character which 

 it is claimed that nature had designed, thus rendering Providence charge- 

 able with a failure. It would also be a most surprising fact that at this 

 late day we should make a discovery which has escaped all previous 

 observers; that the only anomaly or defect in the vegetable kingdom, com- 

 prising, as it does, above forty thousand species, existed in the little family 

 of the Fragaria or strawberry plant. 



" Go, wiser thou ! and in thy scale of sense 

 Weigh thy opinions against Providence. 

 Call imperfection what thou deemest such, 

 Say here he gives too little, there too much." 



If any person has credited some statement adverse to the existence of 

 natural pistillates, let him spend fifteen minutes in some forest in the flow- 

 ering season, and he can satisfy his doubts, as there is not one spot in all 

 North America, from the tropics to the frigid zone, nor between the 

 Atlantic and Pacific oceans, where the pistillate plant may not be found 

 growing with its hermaphrodite congener. I have been familiar with their 

 existence in all our forests, from boyhood, and they abound in the numer- 

 ous woods and prairies of Long Island. I have found them in all the 

 Eastern and Middle States, in some of the Southern, and in most of the 

 Western States. They abound, too, in our vast western prairies. I have 

 also obtained both sexual divisions from Oregon, Hudson's Bay, and the 

 Arctic regions, and both sexual divisions are regularly produced from 



