82 Floivers and their Ptdigrccs, 



berry blossom. Though there are some marked dis- 

 tinctive features even in the flower, to which I shall 

 presently recur, it is in the fruit alone that the two 

 plants really differ sufficiently to attract the attention 

 of an unbotanical eye. But here the difference is one 

 which touches humanity on a very keen point indeed, 

 for the strawberry blossom sets at last into a sweet 

 and pulpy berry, while the potentilla blossom sets 

 only into a small head of dry and unpalatable nutlets. 

 How the edible fruit has developed from the inedible 

 seeds is the question which I propose briefly to in- 

 vestigate in the present paper. 



To get properly at the ancestr}* of the strawberry, 

 we ought first to begin with the potentillas at large, 

 for a most important part of our evidence consists in 

 the fact that the white potentilla varies from the 

 central type of its race in nearly all the same par- 

 ticulars as the strawberry plant. In other words, we 

 have to show that the ancestors of the strawberry had 

 already acquired most of their existing peculiarities 

 while they were still white potentillas, and that they 

 have only then varied so far as to have added to that 

 white potentilla type the one extra peculiarity of a 

 red and juicy berry. Our systematic botanists, indeed, 

 will tell us that while the one plant belongs to the 

 genus Potentilla, the other plant belongs to the 



