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1894.] Whence Came the Cultivated Strawberry ? 305 
of our strawberries. No one can examine the excellent col- 
ored pictures of Keen’s berries,? and other early varieties, 
without being struck by the thick blue-bottomed leaves and 
wide-spreading arm-like trusses—indisputable marks of Fra- 
‘garia Chiloensis. 
Yet, despite these important botanical differences, the garden 
berries and the native Illinoensis are much alike, as I have 
said; and this similarity is really one of the arguments in 
support-of a different geographical origin of the two. Similar 
climates or environments produce similar results, and when 
old berry fields are allowed to run wild, the plants do not 
revert to the type of the Chilian species, but are modified 
rather more in the direction of the indigenous plant. In the 
fall, when the flower trusses are gone and growth has ceased, 
it is sometimes almost impossible to distinguish between the 
leaves of spontaneous garden berries and wild Illinoensis ; but 
the flower clusters the following spring will be likely to distin- 
guish the two. As a matter of fact, garden berries probably 
do not often persist long when run wild. They are unable to 
contend with the grass and weeds, although Iilinoensis may 
find in similar circumstances an acceptable foothold. It is not 
strange, therefore, that those individuals from the old cultiva- 
ted beds which longest persist should be those nearest like the 
native berries, for such would fit most perfectly into the feral 
conditions. 
There is only one conclusion, therefore, which fully satsifies 
all the demands of history, philosophy, and botanical evidence, 
and this is that the garden strawberries are a direct modifica- 
tiou of the Chili strawberry. The initial variation occurred 
when species were thought to be more or less immutable, and, 
lacking exact historical evidence of introduction from a for- 
eign country, hybridization was the most natural explanation 
of the appearance of the strangetype. This modified type has 
driven from cultivation the Virginian berries which were ear- 
lier introduced into gardens; and the original type of the 
Chilian strawberry is little known, as it tends to quickly dis- 
?, 
"See, for instance, the plate of Keen’s Seedling in Trans. London Hort. Soc., v 
