826 
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 1 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 GRANDIFLORA. 
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 
