PRIDE OF MICHIGAN IN BLOOM. 
JUST look at this engraving and imagine every bloom a big red berry; that is just what you will see every year. 
No blank bloom on the Pride of Michigan; every one develops into a big bright red and perfect specimen that 
fills every requirement of an ideal fancy berry. For productiveness, size, quality and beauty, it is certainly a 
record breaker. Read description on page 59. 
a long line of ancestors, as the successful live 
stock breeders are doing, the sooner will this 
weakened condition in plants be eradicated. 
Then, and not imtil then, they will be headed 
in the r.ght direction for big paying crops. 
But while strongly developed plants which 
have been selected from heavy fruiters are the 
principal feature of successful strawberry grow- 
ing, even these do not insure a full degree of 
success without combining other essential fea- 
tures. That is, a thoroughbred plant cannot be 
expected to do unusally heavy work, even though 
it come from the very cream of ancestors, unless 
the grower is willing to do his part in assisting it. 
Neither can a weak, stunted plant prove profit- 
able, no matter how intensive the cultural 
methods are, because it has not the vitality to 
build up fruit buds and its offspring become 
further weakened until the fruit-producing or- 
ganism is entirely exhausted; then, the grower 
says it is run out which, of coarse, is true. Now, 
if a plant will run out by careless propagation, 
why is it not just as easy to run them in" by 
taking the opposite course and breeding from 
the strongest instead of the weakest.'' 
The reader may have a better understanding 
of a thoroughbred plant if it be compared with 
a well-bred horse. An expert horseman would 
not think of training a horse for the track unless 
the animal had a pedigree showing possibilities 
of great speed. And though breeding is the 
principal element, yet the owner would not dare 
depend on this alone. He would insist upon 
having a well-trained driver who understood 
what class of feed this horse required; also how 
to handle it on the track, that it might have every 
advantage possible over its competitors for the 
big prize. The horse expert's first consideration, 
then, is a well-developed, speedy animal. The 
next is proper feeding and a driver who knows 
how to get the speed out of the horse. ^Ve 
think this will suggest to the reader that high 
breeding, without intelligent feeding and driving, 
is not to be counted on in plants any more than 
it is in animals. 
Now, we are ready to go on and tell how to 
hitch up and drive well-bred strawberry plants 
so they may have a chance to display their 
breeding. In the first place, be sure that the 
plants you set really are thoroughbreds and that 
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