on the mountain, in the valley, and through
the forest. It is anything but a despicable
fruit. As the finest diamonds are weighed by
the carat, so the first forced strawberries are
sold by the ounce. The strawberry, saith
Rernbert Dodoens, physician of the city of Malines,
when green is cold and dry, and when ripe cold
and moist. The decoction of the plant used
as a drink, arrests a flux. The same held in
the mouth, comforts the gums, cures malignant
ulcers in the mouth, and takes away all
evil smell from the same. The juice of the
leaves cures all redness of the face.
Strawberries quench thirst, and the continual
usage thereof profits those who have any
great heat in their stomach. What a pity,
therefore, that strawberries are not to be had
for the picking, on the borders of gin-palaces!
They deserve the special favour and
encouragement of Temperance Societies, at home
and abroad.

Our ancestors seem to have valued the
strawberry plant rather for its medicinal
than its epicurean merits; notwithstanding
which, the strawberry was probably one of
the earliest luxuries enjoyed by the primitive
British households or hutholds. Ere sloes
had been ameliorated into Orleans plums;
while crabs were the only native representative
of apples; before Lucullus had
introduced cherries to Roman tables, and when
Armenia had apricots all to herself, ancient
British children would gather fragrant
desserts from the strawberry plants that
skirted ancient British woods, or which
clothed the sunny side of the ditches that
divided the kingdom of Cowford from the
kingdom of Pigham. Our early navigators
did something for strawberries; the
discovery of America did more. The new
arrivals received shelter and hospitality
from worthy and wealthy merchants and
traders, such as John Tradescant, with his
famous garden in Holborn. Whether we
hold them to be species botanically distinct,
or mere varieties of the same species, the
original pine-strawberry is supposed to come
from Surinam, the original scarlet from
Virginia. The old Caroline, from Carolina,
is a most respectable, prolific, and sapid fruit.
Ever since seventeen hundred and twelve,
the Chili strawberry has marvellously
thriven at Brest, in France, from whence it
has spread over the rest of the civilised
world, and to which city it was first brought
from La Conception by an officer of engineers
named Frezièr—rather a curious coincidence
of sound, as Fraisier is French for
strawberry-plant. The Alps, too, were found to
hide within their secret recesses several
strawberries of peculiar character, to which,
after long years of neglect, it is desirable that
the attention of horticulturists should be
seriously directed. The latest discovery and
importation is the new Californian species,
Fragaria lucida, the shining-leaved
strawberry, which perhaps may be one of the
"coming men," fated to raise the destinies of
its family. How, will appear from the:
patient perusal of this paper to its close.
All that I, the writer, am able to say of it
from personal knowledge, is that it is a very
pretty and prepossessing little plant.
Monsieur Van Houtte, the famous nurseryman of
Ghent,—from whom it is to be obtained at
the moderate price of four francs the dozen,
states, with his accustomed honourable
candour, that from the results hitherto obtained
by him, he begins to fear that, although quite
hardy, it has not found, in his cold exposed
situation,* a sufficiently mild climate for its
perfect prosperity. Monsieur Van Houtte
received the seeds from Monsieur Boursier de
la Riviere, who brought them from California,
Madame Elisa L. Vilmorin, the wife of one
of the able contributors to that capital
almanack the Bon Jardinier, publishes her
opinion that this new Californian strawberry
is the most important and the most interesting
in her whole collection. She esteems it of
the greatest value, not only as a species, but
still more as a fruit. It is productive of exquisite
flavour, and very late. It ripens at a time
when no other strawberries remain, except
the last fruits of the Chili, to which, at
Verrieres, it has proved greatly superior.
Madame Vilmorin is about to give to the
world a monograph on strawberries; the
lady's combined opportunities and talents are
an assurance that the work will be of value
both to the botanist and the fruit-grower.

The strawberry dislikes light sandy soil;
thrives best in sound rich loam; is grateful
for a good supply of manure; and cannot
abide a scalding arid subsoil. The plant is
naturally of an unsettled roaming disposition:
it is the infliction of a real punishment to
make it stay too long in a place. No kind
of strawberry should remain more than three
years in the same plot of ground; others, as
the Alpines and other perpetuals, are better
transplanted every autumn. Most
strawberries gratify their rambling propensities by
means of what gardeners call runners a
sort of stalk-like seven-league boots which
enable the offspring, if not the parent plant
itself, to effect a change of residence. We may
calculate approximately, how long it would
take a new sort of strawberry to cross over
from one end of a garden to the end
opposite, by means of its runners. The offsets
thus shot forth from home, to root and settle
themselves at the end of their string, are
highly useful for the purposes of multiplication,
especially as their fruit always resembles
that of the mother plant. Consequently,
there are two ways of propagating
strawberries; by their runners and by their seed.
The first, the quickest and the surest; the
second, more tardy and troublesome, but
eminently useful as a means of obtaining
new varieties, whether by leaving nature to

* See Household Words, vol. xiii., p. 577.