unchecked; and this propensity must be severely curbed to render a bed productive.  Keeping earliness and high flavor in view, I would next recommend the Black Defiance.  It is not remarkably productive on many soils, but the fruit is so delicious that it well deserves a place.  The Duchess and Bidwell follow in the order of ripening.  On my grounds they have always made enormous plants, and yielded an abundance of good-flavored berries.  The Downing is early to medium in the season of ripening, and should be in every collection.  The Indiana is said to resemble this kind, and to be an improvement upon it.  Miner’s Prolific is another kindred berry, and a most excellent one.  Among the latest berries I recommend the Sharpless Champion, or Windsor Chief, and Parry.  If one wishes to raise a very large, late, showy berry, let him try the Longfellow.  The Cornelia is said to grow very large and ripen late, but I have not yet fruited it.  As I said fifteen or twenty years ago, if I were restricted to but one variety, I should choose the Triomphe de Gand, a foreign kind, but well adapted to rich, heavy soils.  The berries begin to ripen early, and last very late.  The Memphis Late has always been the last to mature on my grounds, and, like the Crystal City, is either a wild variety, or else but slightly removed.  The Wilson is the great berry of commerce.  It is not ripe when it is red, and therefore is rarely eaten in perfection.  Let it get almost black in its ripeness, and it is one of the richest berries in existence.  With a liberal allowance of sugar and cream, it makes a dish much too good for an average king.  It is also the best variety for preserving.

It should be remembered that all strawberries, unlike pears, should be allowed to mature fully before being picked.  Many a variety is condemned because the fruit is eaten prematurely.  There is no richer berry in existence than the Windsor Chief, yet the fruit, when merely red, is decidedly disagreeable.

The reader can now make a selection of kinds which should give him six weeks of strawberries.  At the same time he must be warned that plants growing in a hard, dry, poor soil, and in matted beds, yield their fruit almost together, no matter how many varieties may have been set out.  Under such conditions the strawberry season is brief indeed.

While I was writing this paper the chief enemy of the strawberry came blundering and bumping about my lamp—­the May beetle.  The larva of this insect, the well-known white grub, has an insatiable appetite for strawberry roots, and in some localities and seasons is very destructive.  One year I lost at least one hundred thousand plants by this pest.  This beetle does not often lay its egg in well-cultivated ground, and we may reasonably hope to escape its ravages in a garden.  If, when preparing for a bed, many white grubs are found in the soil, I should certainly advise that another locality be chosen.  The only remedy is to dig out the larvae and kill them.  If you find a plant wilting without apparent cause, you may be sure that a grub is feeding on the roots.  The strawberry plant is comparatively free from insect enemies and disease, and rarely disappoints any one who gives it a tithe of the attention it deserves.