HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 271 



Without waiting to inquire whether the last sentence does not 

 really grant all I ever asked for, I would respectfully ask Mr. Long- 

 worth whether the fact of Mr. Pent! and 's having noticed the same 

 tendency to vary in the "true kind" as I did in mine, does not go & 

 long way to prove the accuracy of my own? I fear that our es- 

 teemed Vice President, Dr. Brinckle, and the rest of the committee 

 who reported so favorably of "our Extra Red," will not consider 

 themselves "highly complimented" by learning that their eneoni- 

 um has been lavished on a spurious kind. Nor will our Cincinnati 

 friends be well pleased to learn that a "not true kind" has "crept 

 into the bed (borrowing a style supremely Cincinnatian) and stole 

 the praise due to the original." 



Thomas Meehaj?. 



MORE ABOUT THE STRAWBERRY. 



Mr. Editor : — I have grown the strawberry extensively for over twenty 

 years ; both the old sort3 and the new varieties ; and I have tried many ex- 

 periments in pots and in the open ground, and with different kinds of soil ; 

 I have been minute in my inspections and observation of the fruitful organs 1 

 of the different varieties, and have conversed with many scientific botanists 

 and practical gardeners on the subject, and have always arrived at this con- 

 clusion, that the predominance or deficiency of pistils or stamens in any va- 

 riety was as permanent as the variety itself, and nothing but ocular de- 

 monstration will ever convince me of the contrary. I could never under 

 any treatment make a pistillate variety produce a hermaphrodite flower, or 

 produce a perfect seed that would germinate and make another plant, unless 

 it had been influenced by some staminate variety. I believe that "with 

 God all things are possible,'' hut I think it beyond the power of culture or 

 man's ingenuity to change the sexual organs of any plant. If Mr. Meehan 

 has made a wonderful discovery or witnessed a singular phenomenon, I think 

 that his theory can never become general, and it will be a difficult task to 

 force scientific and practical men to believe it, and as he has deviated so 

 much from the point of discussion in his last communication, people will 

 think that he wishes to get rid of the controversy altogether. Oak leaves 

 and the leaves of euonymus japonica can have no reference whatever to the 

 fruitful organs of strawberry plants. The Catalpss tree is a hermaphrodite 

 plant, whorever it is grown; "old botanists" made a mistake with it as they did 



