352 



FRUITS. 



Chap. x. 



indeed to such crosses most of our choicest existing varieties. Knight 

 did not succeed in crossing the European wood-strawberry with the 

 American Scarlet or with the Hautbois. Mr. Williams, of Pitmaston 

 however, succeeded ; but the hybrid offspring from the Hautbois, though 

 fruiting well, never produced seed, with the exception of a single one 

 which reproduced the parent hybrid form. 104 Major E. Trevor Clarke in- 

 forms me that he crossed two members of the Pine class (Myatt's B. Queen 

 and Keen's Seedling), with the wood and hautbois, and that in each case 

 he raised only a single seedling; one of these fruited, but was almost barren. 

 Mr. W. Smith, of York, has raised similar hybrids with equally poor 

 success. 105 We thus see 103 that the European and American species 

 can with some difficulty be crossed; but it is improbable that hybrids 

 sufficiently fertile to be worth cultivation will ever be thus produced. 

 This fact is surprising, as these forms structurally are not widely distinct 

 and are sometimes connected in the districts where they grow wild, as I 

 hear from Professor Asa Gray, by puzzling intermediate forms. 



The energetic culture of the strawberry is of recent date, and the culti- 

 vated varieties can in most cases still be classed under some one of the above 

 five native stocks. As the American strawberries cross so freely and 

 spontaneously, we can hardly doubt that they will ultimately become in- 

 extricably confused. We find, indeed, that horticulturists at present dis- 

 agree under which class to rank some few of the varieties ; and a writer in 

 the ' Bon Jardinier ' of 1840 remarks that formerly it was possible to class 

 all of them under some one species, but that now this is quite impossible 

 with the American forms, the new English varieties having completely 

 filled up the gaps between them. 107 The blending together of two or 

 more aboriginal forms, which there is every reason to believe has occurred 

 with some of our anciently cultivated productions, we now see actually 

 occurring with our strawberries. 



The cultivated species offer some variations worth notice. The Black 

 Prince, a seedling from Keen's Imperial (this latter being a seedling of a 

 very white strawberry, the white Carolina), is remarkable from " its pecu- 

 liar dark and polished surface, and from presenting an appearance entirely 

 unlike that of any other kind." l08 Although the fruit in the different 

 varieties differs so greatly in form, size, colour, and quality, the so-called 

 seed (which corresponds with the whole fruit in the plum), with the 

 exception of being more or less deeply embedded in the pulp, is, according 

 to De Jonghe, 109 absolutely the same in all ; and this no doubt may be 

 accounted for by the seed being of no value, and consequently not having 

 been subjected to selection. The strawberry is properly three-leaved, but 

 in 1761 Duchesne raised a single-leaved variety of the European wood- 



104 'Transact. Hort. Soc.,' vol v 

 1824, p. 294. 



105 'Journal of Horticulture,' Dec. 

 30th, 1862, p. 779. See also Mr. Prince 

 to the same effect, idem. 1863, p. 418. 



106 For additional evidence see 

 'Journal of Horticulture,' Dec. 9th 



1862, p. 721. 



107 ' Le Fraisier,' par le Comte L. de 

 Lambertye, pp. 221, 230. 



108 ' Transact. Hort. Soc.,' vol. vi. p. 

 200. 



109 ' Gardener's Chron.,' 1858, p. 173. 



