548 THE STRAWBERRY, ETC. 



that even Mr. Wray does not seem to realize, which hold a most im- 

 portant bearing on the success of the strawberry in open field culture 

 in England ; but as these appertain more particularly to that special 

 point, I propose to consider them in a future paper specially devoted to 

 strawberry culture. 



Here strawberries are grown, without any special care, in vast fields 

 of ten to fifty acres, without any covering or protection. The idea of 

 treating our estimable varieties as tender exotics, when their parentage 

 is traceable to Labrador and to the Arctic regions on the Atlantic, and 

 to Oregon and Vancouver's Island, and beyond Lake Attabasca, on the 

 western side of the continent, is an absurdity which no American has 

 been guilty of. Mr. "Wray speaks of 5,000 quarts being grown to an 

 acre in Cincinnati ; but on many plantations, there and elsewhere, 200 

 bushels (6,400 quarts) are not considered an extraordinary crop, and in 

 frequent instances it is claimed that the crop amounts to 250 bushels, 

 or 8,000 quarts, per acre. It is shown by our present statistics that one 

 strawberry-grower sent to market 6,000 quarts a day, his crop for the 

 year amounting to 6,200 dollars. In statistics published in the " New 

 York Times" the following statement is made : " The strawberry trade 

 of New York is the largest of any one point in the world. It is esti- 

 mated that 50,000 bushels are sold annually in Xew York, while about 

 12,000 bushels are sold in Philadelphia, 12,000 in Cincinnati, and 10,000 

 in Boston. During one week last season 400,000 baskets were received 

 daily in Xew York. From one port in Xew Jersey, twenty-five miles 

 distant from the city, there were received by steamboat, in a single day, 

 200,000 baskets. The largest receipt of strawberries in a single day, by 

 railroad, was a load of 892 bushels, or 142,000 baskets, brought in by 

 an evening train on the Erie railroad. Xew York city received last 

 . from all sources, not less than 8,000,000 baskets of strawberries ; 

 the value of these, at the wholesale price of 2j cents the basket, was 

 200,000 dollars, for which the consumers probably paid double that 

 sum. About 1,500 acres of choice land in the vicinity of Xew York 

 are required to supply this market with strawberries. Some farmers 

 cultivate 30 to 50 acres." 



How great, then, the loss to Europe that they have failed to introduce 

 our robust and productive American varieties ! Xot content, however, 

 with ignoring our productive pistillate varieties, tlie European culturists 

 have, with a singular lack of judgment, cast aside also the advantages 

 which nature had presented to them, and adopted the custom of anni- 

 hilating the indispensable staminate plants of the hautbois and pine 

 families. 



The large " white-fleshed varieties," as the pine family is termed in 

 Europe, and which are there held in most esteem, have all been origi- 

 nated from seeds of the F. grand \flora, which comprises both male and 

 hermaphrodite varieties, and it has there been particularly insisted that 

 the hermaphrodites of this family possess both the male and female 



