he 
302 à The American Naturalist. [April, 
under cultivation ; and the Chilian strawberry is widely varia- 
ble in its wild state. Barnet hasinadvertently recorded a dis- 
tinct.departure from the type of the Chilian plant, for he says 
that while this strawberry usually loses its leaves in winter, 
the varieties which have been bred from it keep their leaves. 
This change in my plants is due primarily, no doubt, to a 
greater amount of food, arising from the greater space which 
the plants are allowed to occupy ; and itis possible that other 
environments may have assisted in the transformation. Hav- 
ing this experimental evidence, which so forcibly supplements , 
direct botanical evidence and so well emphasizes the known 
laws of plant variation, I can no longer doubt that the garden 
strawberries are Fragaria Chiloensis, that the early botanists did 
_ not recognize the garden type as a departure from this species, 
and that this type has finally driven from cultivation the 
forms of Fragaria Virginiana. And I am glad to know that so 
great an authority as the elder DeCandolle accepted the opin- 
ion of Seringe (1825) that the Pine, Bath Scarlet and Black 
strawberries belong to the Chilian species, for the Prodromus 
makes Duchesne’s Fragaria ananassa, F. calyculata and F. tincta 
all varieties of the Chilian plant. This was evidently the 
opinion of the Dutch plantsmen of the middle of the last cen- 
tury, also, for even before Duchesne described the Pine straw- 
berry, these merchants sold it under the name of Fragaria Chi- 
loensis ananæformis, indicating that it was regarded asa form of: 
the Chilian species. And Duhamel, towards the close of the 
last century, said that the Pine could be raised from seeds of 
the Chilian. It is evident, however, that Seringe did not 
mean to say thatall the large garden strawberries are offshoots 
of the Chilian species, for he has a variety hybrida of Fragaria 
Virginiana, which is a supposed compound of this species and 
the Pine. But if there was any hybridization in the early 
days, I am confident that it was only incidental and its effect 
was transitory. Our present strawberries are apparently direct 
and legitimate progeny of the Chilian species. ; 
3. Is the Pine strawberry derived from Fragaria Virginians 
var. Illinoensis? I confess that I have believed until recently 
that the garden strawberries are offspring of our native berry; 
