THE PRODUCT OF A STRAWBERRY PATCH. 
R. M. Kellogg's beautiful home on the strawberry farm. Only a few of the ii6 magnificent rnaples 
and other trees surrounding it are shown in the photograph. Here is where the hundreds of visitors 
from all over the United States arc entertained. Come over to Three Rivers and break bread with us. 
If you are a strawberry lover, it will do your soul good. 
and plants and it was shown that these could 
not be produced from strong, bearing wood. 
These were generally crooked and would not 
attain size in the same time they would if 
scions were taken from non-bearing wood con- 
tinuously as by tips of young trees in the 
nursery rows. 
Did you ever notice that a tree bearing big 
crops of fruit was always crooked and scrag- 
gly? When scions are taken from them, the 
young trees have the same peculiarity and 
while they would come into bearing earlier and 
produce much better fruit, yet people do not 
like the looks of them. They judge by size 
and not by the internal machinery. It is exact- 
ly the same with plants. They want a big 
plant and to get it the nurseryman must propa- 
gate those with fruit organs wasted so the re- 
sources go to building up the vegetable parts. 
At this nurserymen's convention Prof. Bai- 
ley made comparisons of plants and animals 
and urged horticulturists to study the meaiis 
adopted by stock breeders for improving their 
animals and all present agreed that a radical 
change must be made; that the advancement of 
horticultural science was such that people 
would soon demand trees that possessed the 
machinery for making fruit of quality and not 
wood, runners and vegetable parts. All this 
is not a mere question of manure and tillage, 
but jfi one of plant organism and development 
of fruit glands requiring years of selection and 
restriction. 
If there were no bud variation you could 
fruit a strawberry plant forever and get just 
as good fruit and as mtich of it every year 
provided you gave it good tillage and plenty of 
manure, a jiroposition so absurd and at such 
variance with tlie experience of every berry 
grower that no intelligent person would accept 
such teaching for a moment and yet the cheap 
John plant growers are still trying to force it 
down people's throats. 
The old Wilson Albany strawberry is often 
cited to show that there was no such thing as 
variation in plants. This old variety posses- 
sed the constitutional vigor of ^ mule and 
stood more abuse, yet still held its place for 
more than forty years as tlie leading market 
berry; but please bear in mind that there were 
nearly as many strains of the Wilson as there 
were berry fields. It was very far from the 
big, luscious berry introduced by James Wil- 
son, of Albany: It did not attain half the size 
it originally did and when you get the facts 
concerning its pedigree of the last thirty years 
of its existence you have conclusive proof that 
selection and restriction thoroughly carried 
out would have perpetuated this sterling old 
variety indefinitely. If you study this subject 
carefully you will see there is a variability in 
everything possessing life and that the basis 
of all improvement is selection and physical 
manipulation. 
10 
