300 The American Naturalist. [April, 
1. Is the Pine a hybrid? The only reason ever advanced 
for considering the Pine strawberry to be a hybrid was the 
supposed impossibility of accounting for its attributes upon 
any other hypothesis. The ideas of hybridity were indefinite 
in those times, and intermediateness of characters was often 
supposed to be enough—as it is, unfortunately, too often at the 
present day—to establish a hybrid origin. In considering this 
matter, two questions at once arise: (a) Does the Pine bear 
evidence of being a hybrid? (b) Would hybrid characters 
perpetuate themselves? I am wholly unable to find, either in 
herbarium specimens of the plants themselves or in the pic- 
tures of the plants, any distinct evidences of hybridity. The 
Pine strawberries differ from the Chilian chiefly in their 
greater size, less hairiness and better fruit, and sometimes by 
somewhat thinner leaves, although this thinness of foliage is 
usually more apparent than real, being due to the larger size 
and consequently greater flexibility of the leaf without any 
real diminution in substance; and I have seen as thin leaves 
in wild Fragaria Chiloensis as in garden berries. But greater 
size could scarcely be obtained from the smaller or or least 
more slender Virginian strawberry, and better sweet fruit 
would not likely result from the amalgamation of the Chilian 
with the little acid fruit of the other. On the other hand, 
there is not a character of the Virginian, so far as I know— 
save possibly some thinness of leaf—which appears in the 
Pine. The slender erect habit, smooth stems, profusion of early 
runners, comparatively simple and very weak-rayed trusses, 
the small calyx, the early, light-colored pitted fruit—noné of 
these marks of the Virginian strawberry appear in the Pine. 
Again (b), it is now known that one of the most characteristic 
marks of hybrids is their variability when propagated from 
seeds; and yet Phillip Miller declares that the old Pine straws 
berry came true to seed! A hybrid left to itself almost inv ariably 
departs from its mongrel type and reverts to one or the other 
parent; and yet here is a supposed hybrid which has held 18 
attributes intact for one hundred and fifty years, and has prè- 
sented a sufficiently unbroken front to overcome all competi- 
