ON THE STRAWBERRY 



apple, the banana, the sugar cane, the horse- 

 radish, and the potato, have been previously 

 referred to in this connection. 



All of these, as is well known, are regularly 

 propagated by the cultivator without the use of 

 seed, and it is only under the most unusual condi- 

 tions that any one of them nowadays produces 

 seed at all. 



I took occasion to emphasize this fact once in a 

 lecture or an interview by saying that I would 

 very willingly pay a thousand dollars an ounce for 

 horseradish seed. The joke went the rounds of 

 the papers and hundreds of people -all over the 

 country watched their horseradish plants the 

 ensuing season with an idea to gaining the prize. 



Needless to say no one has yet produced the 

 ounce of seeds, or any fraction thereof. 



Of course there are certain disadvantages that 

 will attend the entire giving up of the habit of 

 seed production. 



It is not that the plant propagated exclusively 

 from the roots or cuttings degenerates, as was 

 once thought to be the case. In reality there seems 

 to be no limit to the number of generations through 

 which a plant thus propagated by division may 

 maintain its original standards of quality. The 

 familiar cases of the orchard fruits sufficiently 

 support this belief. It may even be possible to 



[81] 



