300 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER 
August 12. 
At this season of Strawberry planting it will be of 
use to record our estimate of some of eighteen varieties 
| obligingly furnished to us last year, and which have 
fruited with us this summer. Next year, however, we 
shall be enabled to give a more trustworthy opinion, 
for all strawberries, and everywhere, have this year been 
deficient in flavour, land our plants probably then will 
be in greater vigour. 
Before giving our estimate of the varieties, we will 
give a sketch of the history of the strawberry, published 
by us elsewhere some year’s since. 
The strawberry, in its wild state, is found only in 
temperate latitudes, and in its European state of nature 
is an insignificant fruit. The wild Scarlet Strawberry of 
Virginia is superior to the natives of the same genus in 
“the old country;” but the really wild Alpine of the 
mountain districts of Italy are not much superior to the 
wood strawberries of England. Even the Hautbois, in 
its wild state, is rarely attractive either in size or flavour. 
It is not known to have been a fruit with which the 
Greeks were acquainted; for it is a mere surmise that it 
is the Teiphyllon of Dioscorides; and the evidence is as 
defective in support of the guess that it is the Komaron 
of Apuleius. There is rather more justification for 
supposing that Dioscorides included the strawberry with 
other plants under the name Pentaphyllon, because the 
passage in Pliny (lib. xxv. c. 9), where he mentions the 
strawberry ( Fraga ), may be so construed. It is a con¬ 
tortion of meaning however. 
The strawberry does not appear to have been cultivated 
by the Romans as a garden fruit, for it is not so much as 
mentioned by any of their writers on the cultivation of 
the soil. Cato, Varro, Columella, and the rest of the 
Geoponic authors, do not even name this fruit; yet it was 
well known to the people as a wild produce among the 
grass and flowers about their pasture grounds; for Virgil, 
when warning the shepherds against the concealed adder, 
especially directs his monitions to those who are seeking 
for flowers and strawberries—“ humi nascentia fraga ” 
(earth-borne strawberries). ( Bucolic . iii. 92.) Ovid notices 
both the Alpine and the Wood Strawberry (Met. lib. i. 
and lib. xiii.); and Pliny mentions the strawberry as one 
of the few native fruits of Italy (lib. xxi. c. 15). 
Passing to more modern times, we still find the straw¬ 
berry unimproved as a garden fruit, and chiefly regarded 
by botanists. When Lyte translated the “ Herball ” of 
' Dodoens in 1578, there does not appear to have been any 
I strawberries known except the Wood Strawberry, and, 
- perhaps, the White Alpine. “ Strawberries,” he says, 
j “ grow in shadowy woods and deep trenches, and banks 
by highway sides. They be also much planted in gardens. 
The fruit is green at the first, but red when it is ripe. 
Sometimes also you shall find them very white when they 
be ripe; in taste and savour very pleasant.” 
Caspar Bauliin, in his “ Pinax,” published in 1(323, 
enumerates the Wood Strawberry, the White Wood 
Strawberry, “ the strawberry with fruit as large as a small 
plum, the Hautboy, or Haarbeer of Gesner, and the 
Alpine. 
In Gerard’s Herball, published by him in 1597, no 
notice is taken of any strawberries but the Red and 
White Wood and the green fruited, the two last “ not to 
be found save only in gardens;” and Johnson, in his 
edition of the same work, published in 1633, does not j 
mention any others. 
Servius calls them Mora terrestris (Earth Mulberries), j 
Parkinson, in his Theatrum Botanicum, in 1610, did 
not add to the knowledge of the strawberry and its ' 
varieties which had been published by his predecessors; 
but in his Parailisus, which issued from the press 1(3 
years later, he describes, besides the Wild Strawberry, the 
Virginian or Scarlet, and the Bohemian, which we do not 
clearly indentify with any of the varieties we cultivate, 
unless it be the Hautbois. “ The Bohemia strawberry,” 
he says, “ hath been with us but of late days, but is the 
goodliest and greatest.” 
Quintinnie, in his “ French Gardener,” translated by 
Evelyn in 1672, enumerates four kinds of strawberry— 
the White, the large Red, the Copprons, and the small 
Red wild. The two last, he says, need not be cultivated, 
being obtained wild abundantly. But it is curious to 
find that some of our recent recommendatious in the 
culture of this fruit are merely revivals of M. Quintiunie’s 
practice. Among these, are planting in August, removing 
the runners as soon as emitted, and renewing some of 
the beds every year, as none, be observes, should be 
cultivated for more than four years. 
Switzer, in his “ Practical Fruit Gardener,” published 
in 1724, only mentions four kinds, the red and white 
Wood, the Virginian or American, and the large Hautboy 
or Polonian. 
It is quite certain, therefore, that quite late in the last 
century, any highly improved variety of the garden 
strawberry was unknown, and we will, therefore, now 
proceed to detail separately such biographical notices of 
each kind as we have collected, and thus trace as far 
back as we can their respective histories. 
The Wood Straivberry, we have seen, was known to 
the Romans, and being a native of our own woods, it is 
the earliest, also, that is mentioned by authors as an 
inhabitant of our gardens. We have seen that Lyte, 
in 1578, says it was “ much planted in gardens;” 
and Tusser, in his “ Five Hundred Points of Good 
Husbandry,” published five years earlier, represents the 
yeoman as saying, in September, 
“ Wife into the garden, and set me a plot 
With strawberry roots, of the best to be got: 
Such growing abroad, among thorns in the wood, 
Well chosen and pricked, prove excellent good.” 
And Stowe, as is truly quoted by Shakspere, records 
that the Bishop of Ely’s garden, in Holborn, was distin¬ 
guished for the excellent strawberries it produced, even 
as far back as the reign of Richard the 3rd (1483). 
Thomas Hyll (1593) informs us, that the berries be 
much eaten at all men’s tables in the summer, with wine 
and sugar, and that they will grow in gardens until the 
bigness of a mulberry. 
The Alpine Strawberry was introduced into France in 
1764, by M. de Fougeron, who observed it upon Mount 
Cenis. Three or four years previously it was cultivated 
