THE KITCHEN-GAEDKN. 



35 



soil, though sandy soils do well if made rich with a compost of ani- 

 mal manure — as bones, offal, etc., and decayed leaves, old mortar, and 

 tanners' waste. 



It often occurs that the staminates have become too numerous. These 

 are easily detected, as they flower some four or five days earlier than 

 the pistillates, and may then be drawn out. 



BLACK PBIiroE, 



BUBB S NEW PINE. 



HOVBY'9 SEEDLING. 



To distinguish Staminates from Pistillates. — In its natural state the 

 . strawberry produces perfect or hermaphrodite blossoms, but cultivation 

 has wrought a change in this respect, and there are now three kinds 

 represented and named as follows : 



1st. Those in which the male or staminate organs are always perfect, 



like a, in the figure ; but the 

 6 . c female or pistillate organs are 



so defective, that they will 

 very rarely bear a perfect 

 ' fruit. These are called stam- 

 inate. 2d. Those in which 

 the female or pistillate organs 

 are perfect (see 6, in figure), but in which the male organs are gener- 

 ally so defective that they cannot produce fruit at all, unless in the 

 neighborhood of, and fertilized by, staminate or hermaphrodite plants. 

 Impregnated by these; they bear enormous crops. These are pistillate. 

 3d. (See figure c.) Those, like the native varieties, which are true her- 

 maphrodites, that is, they are perfect in stamens, and more or less per- 

 fect in pistils, so that they generally produce a tolerable crop, and in 

 favorable seasons, the pistils being fully developed, they will produce a 

 good one. This is the staminate class of the books. " The first of these 

 -classes, the staminate, rarely producing fruit, and running exuberantly 

 to vine, should be dug up wherever they are found, since the herma- 

 phrodite are productive, and equally useful for fertihzing. It is to the 

 pistillate varieties, fertilized by the hermaphrodite, that we must look 

 for large crops of fruit.* 



* White. 



