HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL, 827 



their plants, and bring from 20 to 120 bushels of a day to market, 

 cannot be mistaken. And those who cultivate for family use, will 

 be governed by their opinions, and their own experience. For all 

 say, till instructed on the subject, they could not produce a fourth 

 of a crop, and often not a single fruit. Mr Meehan says, my gar- 

 dener, Mr. Pentland, found plants with both sexes in my bed of 

 Extra Red. He did find an interloper there, and a large number" 

 among other kinds — and being recently from England, where the 

 character of the plant was not known, and being unacquainted with 

 our seedlings, could not readily distinguish them by the stem and 

 leaf. He is now satisfied it was a different variety, and not an Ex- 

 tra Red. For information on the subject, I would refer to the vete-^ 

 ran strawberry grower of Philadelphia, Col. Carr, who is I presume 

 still living. I believe that he has for fifty years cultivated the old 

 pistillate Hudson. I would inquire of him, if he has in fifty years 

 ever seen a change in the sexual character of that, or any other va-^ 

 riety ? Mr. Meehan declares, as he can by a change of heat, change 

 the sexual character of a few plants, "the distinction between 

 staminate and pistillate plants is worthless." If true, it would 

 not lessen the value of the principle, and I would ask where Mr. 

 Meehan's common sense had strayed, when he made the assertion. 

 I have for many years cultivated a great variety of strawberries, on 

 the south, west, and north borders of high stone walls, and' never 

 had a change in the sexes. Yet here was a greater change in tlie 

 atmosphere, than Mr. Meehan had in his greenhouse. 



N. Longworth. 



In the October number of the Farm Journal, Mr. W, R. Prince of Flush- 

 ing,- Ir. I., contributes a long article on the strawberry question ; to say the 

 least, k is, like the former articles by the same gentleman, in very bad 

 taste : the writer indulges in remarks not proper in any discussion ; but it is 

 a well known axiom that those who are in the wrong always make the noise. 



There has not been as we have said before, anything in the way of argu- 

 ment on the side of the" unchangeable Cincinnati theorists, all is assertion, 

 denial, and, on the part of Mr. Prince abuse of Mr. Meehan. 



Asa scientific fact, the change from apparently pistillate to perfect flow- 

 ers is one of the simplest ; — the strawberry in its natural state has perfect 



