294 The American Naturalist. [April, 
origin, or in which the speculative evolutionist can find 
stronger proof of the instability and elasticity of plants. 
I have said that the history of the strawberry is well 
known. There has been a careful record from the time Casper 
Bauhin and his contemporaries wrote their voluminous her- 
bals. We cannot expect, as this time, therefore, to add any- 
thing to this long and consequential record. We must accept 
the history essentially as we find it. Butit is possible that we 
shall be able to elucidate the evolution of the strawberry by 
the application of some of the principles of plant variation, 
the knowledge of which is now sufficient to warrant a con- 
structive retrospect. At all events, if these laws cannot solve 
the general problem of the evolution of the strawberry, we 
must continue to remain in ignorance of its birth and depart- 
ure.’ This inquiry will be all the more interesting, also, from 
the fact that the first monographer of the strawberries, 
Duchesne, in 1766, made an attempt to explain the origin of 
known species from the Alpine or Everbearing strawberries of 
Europe, and this essay, which has apparently not attracted the 
attention of modern philosophers, is one of the earliest efforts 
to account for the origin of organisms by means of a course of 
development. 
It is necessary at the outset to eliminate the so-called 
European types of strawberries from our inquiry. These 
belong to three or four species native to Europe, chiefly to 
Fragaria vesca and F. moschata (F. elatior), and the botanical 
characters are sufficiently clear and uniform to allow of little 
doubt as to their origin. The first strawberries, like the Fres- 
sant, are of this type. These European types are mostly small 
and delicate fruits which are grown in France and some other 
parts of continental Europe, but which are little more than 
curiosities in England and America. It is the class of large 
American and English strawberries to which I now wish to 
direct attention, a type which, while grown in all temperate 
countries, seems to have first come to great prominence in Eng- 
land and which is the only market strawberry of America. 
The first foreign strawberry to reach Europe was the com- 
mon small species of eastern America, and which is known t° 
