PREFACE. 
AN annually increasing interest is felt in this country 
in the cultivation of strawberries. Every year brings 
with it new varieties, and a better knowledge of old 
kinds, new methods, and a clearer insight into the merits 
and defects of those heretofore practised. The old days 
when the Wood strawberry, the Early Virginia, and 
one or two now forgotten kinds, supplied the market, 
and when a man who picked fifty boxes a day was held 
‘to be a large strawberry grower, are past and gone. 
We have now scores of varieties for each one of the 
old kinds, and single commission houses sell sometimes 
twelve thousand boxes a day. 
The magnificent success of Hovey in producing his 
Seedling stimulated many other horticulturists to ex- 
periment, and has led to the. productidn of countless 
kinds, many of them of high rank. The war of words 
that was caused by the production of Hovey’s Seedling 
has been succeeded by peace, or by acalm, and it has 
led to much. good; for those who fought ‘so bitterly 
with tongue and pen have attempted to work out their 
theories in the garden, and in so dging have produced 
new and most valuable kinds of strawberries. 
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