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A new berry was brought over from Virginia, FRAGRARIA VIRGINIANA, and then, amid wars and rumours of wars, Doctor Butler's happiness was secure. That new berry was so much richer and sweeter and more generous than the familiar FRAGRARIA VESCA of Europe, that it attracted the sincere interest of all persons of good taste. It inaugurated a new era in the history of the strawberry.
They arrive here, and breed early in the spring sometimes, indeed, before the snow is off the hills get their young off in June, and with their young are most unmercifully, most unsportsmanly, thinned off, when they can hardly fly such is the error, as I think it, of the law but I could not convince my stanch friends, Philo, and J. Cypress, Jr., of the fact, when they bestirred themselves in favor of the progeny of their especial favorites, perdix virginiana and tetrao umbellus, and did defer the times for slaying them legitimately to such a period, that it is in fact next to impossible to kill the latter bird at all.
"On the marshy ground thrive the Iris versicolor, Asclepias incarnata, the Primrose-tree, Liver-wort, the tall Physostegia Virginiana, with rosy-red blossoms, and the Helenium autumnale, in which the yellow color predominates. In spring, the dark violet blossom of the Amorpha fruticosa diffuses its fragrance."
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. Its seeds, sown under all possible conditions, reproduce the parent plant.
But a curious result follows from a study of the past distribution of deer in America. At a time when the branched stage had been already reached in North America, the isthmus of Panama was under water; deer were then absent from South America and the earliest forms found fossil there had antlers of the type of M. virginiana.
The two styles of antler which we recognize in the North American deer are too well known to require description. The section represented by M. virginiana, with antlers curving forward and tines projecting from its hinder border, takes practically the whole of America in its range, and under the law of variation which has been stated, has proved a veritable gold mine to the makers of names.
Under the soft mists of a cool May day I brushed the dew from the wood grasses and unrolling croziers of cinnamon fern to pause in admiration at shrubs and trees bearing calling cards. Here is a red cedar announcing on a Dennison tag, "I am Juniperus virginiana, known to my intimates as savin."
The sub-genus Dorcelaphus contains all the forms of the United States; of these, the deer belonging east of the Missouri River, those from the great plains to the Pacific, those along the Rio Grande in Texas and Mexico, those of Florida, and those again of Sonora, are each rated as sub-species of virginiana; to which we must add six more, ranging from Mexico to Bolivia.
It is the same bird, Ortyx Virginiana: they call it partridge in the South rather smaller than ours at the North. In the swamp I found snipe, Scolopax Wilsonii: they call them here jacksnipe. Here is one of them: did you ever see a fatter bird?" "I should like to go and look them up to-morrow morning," said the captain. "How far away were they?" "About half a mile only, north-west.
The two species of wild strawberry which figure so frequently in the stories of these early explorers are Fragaria vesca and F. virginiana. From the last-named is derived the cultivated strawberry of Europe. The wild strawberries of North America were larger than those of Europe. Three or more kinds of gooseberry grow wild in Canada, but they are different from the European species.
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