As we have intimated before, this fruit as we find it in our gardens, even though we raise foreign kinds, came originally from America.  The two great species, Fragaria chilensis, found on the Pacific slope from Oregon to Chili, and Fragaria virginiana, growing wild in all parts of North America east of the Rocky Mountains, are the sources of all the fine varieties that have been named and cultivated.  The Alpine strawberry (Fragaria vesca), which grows wild throughout the northern hemisphere, does not appear capable of much variation and development under cultivation.  Its seeds, sown under all possible conditions, reproduce the parent plant.  Foreign gardeners eventually learned, however, that seeds of the Chili and Virginia strawberry produced new varieties which were often much better than their parents.  As time passed, and more attention was drawn to this subject, superb varieties were originated abroad, many of them acquiring a wide celebrity.  In this case, as has been true of nearly all other fruits, our nursery-men and fruit-growers first looked to Europe for improved varieties.  Horticulturists were slow to learn that in our own native species were the possibilities of the best success.  The Chili strawberry, brought directly from the Pacific coast to the East, is not at home in our climate, and is still more unfitted to contend with it after generations of culture in Europe.  Even our hardier Virginia strawberry, coming back to us from England after many years of high stimulation in a moist, mild climate, is unequal to the harsher conditions of life here.  They are like native Americans who have lived and been pampered abroad so long that they find this country “quite too rude, you know—­ beastly climate.”  Therefore, in the choice varieties, and in developing new ones, the nearer we can keep to vigorous strains of our own hardy Virginia species the better.  From it have proceeded and will continue to come the finest kinds that can be grown east of the Rockies.  Nevertheless, what was said of foreign raspberries is almost equally true of European strawberries like the Triomphe de Gand and Jucunda, and hybrids like the Wilder.  In localities where they can be grown, their beauty and fine flavor repay for the high culture and careful winter protection required.  But they can scarcely be made to thrive on light soils or very far to the south.

So many varieties are offered for sale that the question of choice is a bewildering one.  I have therefore sought to meet it, as before, by giving the advice of those whose opinions are well entitled to respect.

Dr. Hexamer, who has had great and varied experience, writes as follows:  “A neighbor of mine who has for years bought nearly every new strawberry when first introduced, has settled on the Duchess and Cumberland as the only varieties he will grow in the future, and thinks it not worth while to seek for something better.  Confined to two varieties, a more satisfactory selection could scarcely be made.  But you want six or seven, either being, I think, about the right number for the home garden.  I will give them in the order of desirability according to my judgment—­ Cumberland, Charles Downing, Duchess, Mount Vernon, Warren, Sharpless, Jewell.”