but usually the result of skill and industry, or their reverse.

I might have given many examples of large, and even enormously large,
profits obtained under exceptional circumstances; but they tend to
mislead. I write for those whose hearts prompt them to co-work with
nature, and who are most happy when doing her bidding in the breezy
fields and gardens, content with fair rewards, instead of being
consumed by the gambler's greed for unearned gold. At the same time, I
am decidedly in favor of high culture, and the most generous enriching
of the soil; convinced that fruit growers and farmers in general would
make far more money if they spent upon one acre what they usually
expend on three. In a later chapter will be found an instance of an
expenditure of $350 per acre on strawberry land, and the net profits
obtained were proportionately large.




CHAPTER IV

STRAWBERRIES: THE FIVE SPECIES AND THEIR HISTORY


The conscientious Diedrich Knickerbocker, that venerated historian
from whom all good citizens of New York obtain the first impressions
of their ancestry, felt that he had no right to chronicle the
vicissitudes of Manhattan Island until he had first accounted for the
universe of which it is a part. Equally with the important bit of land
named, the strawberry belongs to the existing cosmos, and might be
traced back to "old chaos." I hasten to re-assure the dismayed reader.