THE STUAWBEERY, ETC. 549 



organs in perfection. It is true that the organs are always present, but 

 the male organs of these hermaphrodites are deficient in pollen, whereby 

 a combination with the staminate is rendered indispensable to a perfect 

 crop. The assumption of the fatal error as to the perfection of the her- 

 maphrodites culminated in the adoption everywhere in Europe of a 

 system based on the destruction of all the male seedlings, and a practice 

 thus fallacious — an utter perversion of nature — has been universally 

 urged in England and elsewhere throughout Europe, and has resulted 

 in the extermination of the male plants. It seems never to have oc- 

 curred to their superficial minds that nature, always equally economical 

 and provident, and ever compensatory, had not furnished these stami- 

 nate or male varieties without a purpose, and that they were, therefore, 

 essentially necessary to the ample results which nature had designed as 

 to the crop. 



" Go, wiser thou ! and in thy scale of sense 

 "Weigh thy opinions against Providence ; 

 Call imperfection what thou fanciest such, 

 Say here he gives too little, there too much." 



Although the hermaphrodite varieties combine the two sexual 

 organs, yet normally but one of them is perfect and preponderates, and 

 the other is defective ; consequently, the combination of the male is re- 

 quired in the one case and of the female in the other to perfect a full 

 crop. It would therefore seem that nature, in the vegetable as in the 

 animal kingdom, is ever exercising her influence on the compensating 

 principle, and that the means imparted are always in exact ratio to the 

 result to be attained. And it must here be borne in mind that these 

 sexual conditions are all normal or primeval, and consequently are per- 

 manent. 



From the time of Linnaeus and Jussieu to the present day we do not 

 witness any sexual change whatever, and a standard that has remained 

 unchanged from their clay down to the present time, with no prospect of 

 any future variation, may well be considered as permanently estab- 

 lished. 



When in any of the Fragaria species the male organs of the herma- 

 phrodite are imperfect, nature, ever provident, furnishes the male or 

 staminate plant to supply the deficiency. And when in any species the 

 female organs in the hermaphrodite are defective, nature presents us 

 with the pistillate or female variety. But when any species like the 

 F. vesca and F. collina, and also the Indica, are perfect in both organs 

 throughout all their varieties, nature, never wasting her resources, gives 

 us none other than hermaphrodites. 



These exterminated males are as necessary to make up the imper- 

 fection of the male organs in the European and South American 

 hermaphrodites as the female or pistillate varieties of North America 

 are essential to compensate for the deficiency in the female develop- 



