326 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Strawberries will now be produced in great numbers, some of 

 which may deserve to be hailed as valuable discoveries. We 

 must be content to wait for them to appear, and in the meantime 

 turn the few already established sorts to the best possible account, 

 which can be done most successfully with some care and manage- 

 ment. The best system, to the extent of my experience, consists 

 in preventing the perpetual varieties from flowering and bearing 

 fruit in May, when they cannot compete anything like success- 

 fully with the fine single-cropping sorts, suppressing the runners 

 all the time, and in manuring, mulching, and watering freely 

 from July to the end of September. 



The use of the perpetual Strawberries for forcing I am not 

 acquainted with, and therefore I will abstain from treading on 

 unexplored ground. 



But I will add a last remark to the effect that I have observed 

 an imperfectly perpetual Strawberry found in the district of 

 Angers to bear fruit much more abundantly since the ' St. 

 Joseph ' Strawberry has been introduced into my garden at 

 Verrieres. It seems evident that the flowers borne out of season 

 by the former, which I suppose to be a chance seedling from 

 the old Pine-apple Strawberry, mostly failed to set for lack of 

 impregnation, and now are regularly pollinised in consequence of 

 the ' St. Joseph ' Strawberry bearing a profusion of perfect 

 stamens nearly all the year round. 



The new race should then prove doubly useful in bearing 

 fruit constantly and in helping to impregnate the ovaries of 

 other varieties. 



THE DISA GEANDIFLORA. 

 By Mr. F. W. Birkinshaw. 

 [Read September 6, 1898.] 

 This interesting cool Orchid is one of my special favourites, and 

 I may say that I have grown it with very fair success. In some 

 seasons of course it has flowered much better than in others, 

 according to the strength of the annual growth which it makes. 



There are, I believe, upwards of fifty species of Disa, chiefly 

 natives of the Table Mountain and the Mascarenhas Islands; 

 but I am sorry to say that not half of them are cultivated in 

 European gardens at the present day. I do not know why this 



