94 



attain greater perfection than elsewhere.* The 

 strawberry of Chili was iniroduced many years 

 since into Europe, and I have seen in the botanic 

 garden at Bologna the white kind, which is the most 

 common in Chili, but it had lost much by transplan- 

 tation ; its fruit was small, and little of the fragrance 

 was left which renders it so highly esteemed in 

 ChiH.t 



* The strawberry of Cliili is an hermaphrodite and dioical, and 

 the plants brought by Frazier to Europe -were probably only some 

 female hermaphrodite shoots, which produced fruit in consequence 

 of being impregnated by some of our strawberries which were in the 

 vicinity. Had the author been in a situation to have become ac- 

 quainted with this circumstance, he would not have called that 

 degeneration which is merely the result of an unnatural fecundity. 



The want of male plants, as appears from Miller, js also the 

 reason of the English having abandoned the cultivation of this 

 strawberry Fr, Trans. 



t We found in the desert strawberries of a very fine flavour, 

 equal in size to our largest nuts, and of a pale white ; and although 

 they resembled the European neither in colour nor in taste they 

 v/ere nevertheless excellent. — Fcuillé ^ vol. i. 



There are v/hole fields where a species of strawberry is cultivat- 

 ed that diiTers from ours in its leaves, v/hich* are rounder, and more 

 fieshy and hairy ; the fruit is usually the size of a nut, and some- 

 times that of a hen's egg. The colour is a whitish red, and the 

 taste not so delicate as that of our strawberries. But there is not 

 wanting in the woods a great plenty of the European kind. — Fra- 

 zier^ s Foi/ age y vol. i. 



The fruits most abundant in Chili are of the same kijiids with 

 those known in Europe, among which are cherries that are large 

 and of a çlelicate taste, strawberries of two kinds, one called fru- 

 tilla, which is of the size of a small hen's egg ; and another, in co- 

 lour, smell and taste, is like that of Spain, which grows wild at the 

 foot of the little hills ; likewise all kinds of flowers are found there 

 without any other cultivation than what they receive from the hands, 

 of nature itself. — UUoa's Voyage, 2d part, vol. iii. 



