12 . Lhe Strawberry Book. 
Nicaise, Admiral Dundas, &c., the ground can hardly be 
made too deep or too rich. The latter varieties will fail 
utterly where the Wilson or the Agriculturist would do 
tolerably well. The President Wilder exhibits in many 
respects its relationship to La Constante, and, like that 
fine berry, it is fond of good feeding. 
While many kinds of strawberries will do well, al- 
though poorly fed, there is hardly one that will not do 
better on well-manured land; and in general, we may 
say, as in the case of other crops, the more manure the 
more strawberries. 
The Germans are fond of saying of their vineyards, 
“ Well dug is half manured;” but deep cultivation and 
fine working the land for strawberries, although of ex- 
ceeding value, will not take the place of manure. 
It is hard to name the fertilizer that cannot be used to 
advantage, either: in preparing the soil for a strawberry 
plantation, or as a top-dressing for it. Stable manure, 
compost, unleached ashes, superphosphate of lime, guano, 
fish manure, and hen dung, may each and all be used 
with profit. Market gardeners, who can command an 
abundance of stable manure, generally give that the pref- 
erence, using Peruvian guano, however, as a tonic, or 
special means ‘for bringing up to the mark any part of a 
field that seems to be behind the rest in vigor or health. 
Lime alone is considered by some injurious, but super- 
phosphate of lime is certainly beneficial. Guano alone, 
scattered broadcast half a dozen times through the sum- 
mer, before a rain in each case ‘if possible, using in all 
eight hundred or a thousand pounds to the acre, produces 
wonderful results, and may take the place of all other 
manures. I have used it in this way with excellent 
results. Guano composted in the fall, with say fifty times 
its bulk of peat earth, and allowed to remain through the 
winter in a pile, well covered with a few inches of soil, 
makes, in the opinion ef many, the best possible of all 
composts, 5 : 
