THE STRAWBERRY, ETC. 547 



which call never be varied or contravened any more in the humblest 

 plant than in the largest animal, or in the movements of the spheres. 



" From Nature's chain whatever link you strike, 

 Tenth or ten -thousandth, breaks the chain alike." 



As climate — cold or hot, dry or humid — can in no wise affect the 

 sexuality of any plant more than of any animal, the assertion made by 

 a quandam observer, which has been made in print, that the Alpine va- 

 rieties of strawberries, which have perfect flowers (hermaphrodite) in the 

 regions of perpetual snow, when removed to the climates of low r er 

 parallels produce pistillates and staminates as seedlings has no founda- 

 tion in truth. As the plants growing in the alpine regions are all of 

 the Frag aria vesca and F. collina species, I now put the question to 

 every cultivator whether he has ever seen one single variation, as 

 alleged, in all the seedlings that have ever been produced from those 

 two species. No such variation has ever occurred, and the assertion is in 

 direct contradiction to Dr. Lindley, who says he has never seen any 

 other than hermaphrodite plants, except of the hautbois {F. elatior.) It 

 is also controverted by the fact that it is universally recommended that 

 the wood and alpine varieties be propagated from seeds, their sexual 

 organs being always perfect ; and this course is specially urged by Keen, 

 in the London Horticultural Transactions, and in the " Bon Jardinier,'' 

 they having been grown in France for centuries without the least 

 variation. 



All the esteemed European seedling varieties now cultivated in 

 England, France, and Belgium are hermaphrodites, and Mr. Wray states 

 that " these are so imperfectly developed in their organs they seldom 

 produce other than a very scanty cross of inferior and imperfect berries." 

 That the object of the high-priced grower is attained if he only has a 

 few large-sized berries on each plant ; but that if these plants were 

 placed in an open field, deprived of hand-glasses, artificial impregnation, 

 and unremitting watchfulness, they would be dead failures, and for a 

 general crop quite unsuitable. 



It is admitted on all hands that the principal strawberries in England 

 are treated as tender exotics, and Mr. Wray asks, " Why is it so pam- 

 pered, swathed, and swaddled, and its hardy character so completely 

 ignored V In England the fine varieties of strawberries are so expen- 

 sively grown that they only reach the tables of the wealthy classes, 

 whereas in America they are chiefly grown for the million. Mr. Wray 

 also remarks that " so hardy a plant should certainly appertain more 

 to open field culture than to the elaborate and expensive culture of the 

 garden." The reason, he says, is " because science has not been applied 

 to its culture," and hence "the supply is totally inadequate to the 

 demand." 



There are points of consideration other than the sexual question 

 which European writers and cultivators have hitherto lost sight of, and 



3 a2 



