70 
MYATT S TINE STRAWBERRY. 
" It is remarkable that in a group so nu- 
merous as this, — consisting as it does of nearly 
two thousand known species, and of probably 
as many more which, being buried in the 
depths of unexplored tropical forests, have 
not yet been described, — and extending over 
almost the whole habitable globe, as far as the 
borders of the frozen zone, — there should be 
so few species possessed of properties that 
make them in any way useful to man. It 
often happens that the most powerful virtues, 
or the most deadly poisons, are hidden beneath 
a mean and insignificant exterior ; whilst 
those productions of nature which charm the 
eye with their beauty, and delight the senses 
with their perfume, have the least relation 
with the wants of mankind. So it appears to 
be in this instance. The aromatic substance 
called Vanilla, which is sometimes used as an 
ingredient in chocolate, also to flavour sweet 
dishes, and to perfume snuff", is the succulent 
fruit of an Orchideous plant, which, in the 
West Indies, creeps over trees and walls like 
ivy. A nutritive substance termed Salep, 
somewhat resembling arrow-root or sago, is 
obtained from the tubers of a species which 
grows in Turkey and Persia, where it is highly 
esteemed. It used to be sold at the corners 
of the streets in London, and was a favourite 
drink with porters, coalheavers, and other 
hard-working people, by whom it was consi- 
dered very strengthening; and the comparative 
disuse into which it has fallen is perhaps to 
be regretted. It is said to contain a greater 
amount of nutriment in the same bulk, than 
any other vegetable substance; and for this 
reason it is much employed by travellers, who 
have to carry their supplies with them into 
deserts and uninhabited countries. So high 
a nutritive power has been assigned to it, that 
it has been asserted that one ounce of salep, 
boiled with an equal quantity of the stiff 
glue or animal jelly known as portable soup, 
in two quarts of water, will suffice for the 
daily nourishment of an able-bodied man. 
Some of the South American species contain 
a viscid substance, which, when separated by 
boiling, serves as a sort of glue, which is used 
by the Brazilians for sticking together their 
skins of leather. There is scarcely any other 
way in which this order is of any direct utility 
toman."— Pp. 521, 522. 
Our readers will now be able to judge for 
themselves of the value of a volume written 
fairly down to common understandings, but 
leading their thoughts to the highest objects in 
the natural history of the vegetable kingdom. 
myatt's pine strawberry. 
The difficulty experienced in growing the 
Myatt's Pine Strawberry has induced many, 
more or less successful, attempts at new and 
improved modes of growing the Strawberry. 
A number of these plans have been published 
in the horticultural works of the clay with 
some advantage ; and therefore I write a 
short, but I hope plain, account of a plan 
I have followed with the best success in culti- 
vating Myatt's Pine and other Strawberries. 
It is in some respects different from any I 
have seen adopted or recommended. In spring 
I choose the compartment where I intend to 
grow my Strawberries — I do not care whether 
it be heavy loam or light, as each have their 
peculiar advantage, and Strawberries will do 
in either; and having divided or marked it 
into three feet longitudinal divisions, and 
laid a heavy quantity of well-made dung on 
every alternate division or space, I then pro- 
ceed to well trench these dunged divisions, 
where, if I chance to be scant of ground for 
my vegetable crops, I plant a row of potatoes, 
or sow turnips, broadcast, on these trenched 
divisions. Having got these crops removed in 
time, I, early in autumn, soon as I can get 
rooted runners, plant two rows of runners or 
young Strawberry plants along each prepared 
space. These rows I keep nine inches from 
the edges of the outer beds, and consequently 
eighteen apart in the beds, while the plants are 
placed pretty close, say a foot apart in the 
rows. Next summer, having got a small crop 
from these plants, I induce a sufficient number 
of runners to root in each of the nine-inch 
spaces outside, but none in the eighteen-inch 
spaces between these rows. 
In autumn I cut away all superfluous or 
misplaced runners, and — contrary to the dic- 
tates of theory — the foliage from the old 
plants. These runners and leaves I dig into 
the eighteen-inch spaces between the old 
rows; at the same time, or next spring, I dung 
and trench the vacant three-feet spaces (lay- 
ing a little soil as top-dressing over the 
denuded plants), on to which spaces I en- 
courage runners from both sides, until I have 
thus, in the third year, a young plantation, 
placed at the same distances, and in the same 
manner, as I had on the first occupied, on 
what was hitherto unoccupied spaces; and in the 
fourth year the earliest planted rows are dug 
down, the first established runners are in full 
bearing, and the last rooted ones are bearing 
a first crop. In the fifth year the relative 
proportions of occupied and vacant ground 
are the same as they were the first year, that 
is, equal, with this difference, that the plants 
in the occupied spaces are fully established 
and in full bearing. 
By this mode of culture Strawberries may 
be grown for an indefinite length of time on 
the same quarter of ground, and that without 
a single season's loss of crop, or having the 
