6 Preface. 
Myatt, Rivers, Nicholson, and Ingram, in England ; 
De Jonghe in Belgium; Dr. Nicaise (now no more), 
Gloede, Robine, Pelvilain, Boisselot, and others, in 
France; Burr, Prince, Scott, Fuller, Read, Durand, 
‘Downer, Boyden, Wilder, and many others, at home, — 
have given us a host of varieties, some of them so good 
that we are embarrassed in choosing amid such pro- 
fusion. 
Many of these, to be sure, do not rise above a certain 
grade of goodness; but once in a while one comes that 
towers above its fellows, and stands alone in its pecu- 
liar place. Such berries are the Hovey, La Constante, 
the British Queen, and our great recent acquisition, the 
President Wilder. 
The hope of drawing prizes like these keeps experi- 
menters busy with their lotteries of seedlings. The 
number of amateurs at work, the pride they take in 
their own results, the interest they feel in their neigh- 
bors’ success, and the broad acres cultivated with straw- 
berries, to supply the ever-greedy markets of our cities, 
are all proofs of the deep hold the strawberry has upon 
the attention of tens of thousands of intelligent culti- 
vators in this country. 
In the hope that one in a thousand of these may feel 
kindly disposed towards a new strawberry manual, I have 
written this little treatise. 
I intended to preface it with a chapter on the botan- 
ical relations of the strawberry, and to discuss the ques- 
tion of the number of species, &c.; but finding the matter 
so much confused, and learning from the highest botan- 
ical authority in the country (whose kindness to me I 
