many plain, practical fruit-growers who are as well informed and
sensible as they are modest in expressing their opinions.

CORNWALL-ON-THE-HUDSON,
NEW YORK.



PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION


On page 315 of this volume will be found the following words: "To
attempt to describe all the strawberries that have been named would be
a task almost as interminable as useless. This whole question of
varieties presents a different phase every four or five years.
Therefore I treat the subject in my final chapter in order that I may
give revision, as often as there shall be occasion for it, without
disturbing the body of the book. A few years since certain varieties
were making almost as great a sensation as the Sharpless. They are now
regarded as little better than weeds in most localities." Now that my
publishers ask me to attempt this work of revision, I find that I
shrink from it, for reasons natural and cogent to my mind. Possibly
the reader may see them in the same light. The principles of
cultivation, treatment of soils, fertilizing, etc., remain much the
same; My words relating to these topics were penned when knowledge--
the result of many years of practical experience--was fresh in memory.
Subsequent observation has confirmed the views I then held, and, what
is of far more weight in my estimation, they have been endorsed by the
best and most thoroughly informed horticulturists in the land. I wrote
what I then thought was true; I now read what has been declared true