THE STRAWBERRY, ETC. 545 



been recently introduced there ; this deficiency having resulted from 

 her fatuity in ignoring the rapid progress made in the strawberry culture 

 in America during the last fifty years. 



Black Sti'awberries. — The varieties which are so called and classed as 

 a distinct species or family in the London Society's Transactions, are 

 not actually so, but are merely very dark-coloured varieties of the F. 

 Virginiana, or hybrids. No such distinctive division is made by the 

 French and Belgians. The Downton is a seedling of F. Virginiana, and 

 others may be hybrids, such as Black Prince, Hovey, &c. 



In Johnson's Dictionary of Gardening this section is distinguished 

 as " F. vesca niqella ;" but as F. vesca is European, and all the black 

 strawberries are from American species, the author could not have been 

 very conversant with the subject. 



Mr. T. A. Knight, when president of the London Horticultural Society 

 raised a large number of seedling strawberries, from which he selected 

 about twenty varieties, which were described in the Society's Transac- 

 tions, but these were grown from seeds injudiciously selected without 

 any proper regard to sexual hybridization, and it would seem that he was 

 then, as Dr. Lindley has been since, ignorant that such sexual distinc- 

 tions existed, although he had seven pistillate varieties in the garden 

 over which he presided. The varieties produced by him have, in conse- 

 quence of their inferiority, been long since abandoned. Mr. Knight con- 

 sidered the F. grandiflora or Pine, the Chilensis or Chili, and the Virgi- 

 niana or Scarlet, to be only varieties of one species, as all these (he says) 

 may be made to breed together indiscriminately. This is a radical 

 error. The first two species will blend with each other, although they 

 are very distinct, but these two differ so entirely from the Virginiana 

 that they never commingle therewith. 



It is plainly apparent that in Europe this subject of sexuality has 

 been almost entirely overlooked by the mass, and that investigation has 

 been neglected by the professedly scientific, and discouraged by the 

 prolonged assumptions of Dr. Lindley and others, that the " science " 

 of the otherwise "cute" Americans was mere " theory and assertion," 

 which simply required a little English "practice and common sense" to 

 regulate it. Thus they have, during the whole period of forty-four 

 years since the establishment of the London Horticultural Society's 

 garden, remained in the ignorance of " intellectual exclusiveness," from 

 which Mr. Wray's account of what he saw in America has at last 

 awakened them. 



Undoubtedly the publication by Mr. Wray of the " Scientific culture 

 of the strawberry," resulting from his recent visit to our American 

 gardens, will effect quite a change in the European method of culture, 

 so that it will henceforth be based on those scientific principles long- 

 practised in this country, and which were announced by my father, 

 William Prince, and myself, in various horticultural periodicals, and 

 published in our " Treatise on Horticulture" in 1828, and which have 

 VOL. ill. 3 A 



