It was, therefore, with unfeigned surprise, that we read Mr. Hovey’s latest remarks in the September number of his magazine, in which, with some asperity, he roundly charges Mr. Longworth with manifold errors, and treats him with a contempt which would lead one, ignorant of the controversy, to suppose that Mr. Hovey had never made a mistake, and that Mr. Longworth had been particularly
fertile of them. Thus: “Mr. Longworth’s remarks abound in so many errors and inconsistencies, that we shall expect scarcely to notice all.” “Another gross assertion,” etc. Referring to another topic, he says, “This question we, therefore, consider as satisfactorily settled, without discussing Mr. Longworth’s conflicting views about male and female, Keen’s,” etc.
This somewhat tragical comedy is now nearly played out, and we have spoken a word just before the fall of the curtain, because, as chroniclers of events, and critics of horticultural literature and learning, it seemed no less than our duty. We have highly appreciated Mr. Hovey’s various exertions for the promotion of the art and science of horticulture, nor will his manifest errors and short-comings in this particular instance, disincline us to receive from his pen whatsoever is good.
We hope that our remarks will not be construed as a defence of western men or western theories, but as the defence of the truth, and of one who has truly expounded it, though, in this case, theory and its defender happen to be of western origin. Whatever errors have crept into Mr. Longworth’s remarks should be faithfully expurgated; and perhaps it may be Mr. Hovey’s duty to perform the lustration. If so, courtesy would seem to require that it should be done with some consciousness, that through this whole controversy Mr. Longworth is now admitted to have been right in all essential matters; and if in error at all, only in minor particulars, while Mr. Hovey, in all the controversy, in respect to the plainest facts, has been changing from wrong to right, from right to wrong, and from wrong back to right again. We do not think that the admirable benefits which Mr. Longworth has conferred upon the whole community by urging the improved method of cultivating the strawberry, has been adequately appreciated. We still less like to see gratitude expressed in the shape of snarling gibes and petty cavils.
We will close these remarks by the correction of a matter which Mr. Downing states. While he assents to all the practical aspects of Mr. Longworth’s views, he dissents as to some matters of fact and philosophy, and among others, to the fact that Hovey’s seedling is always and only a pistillate plant. He thinks that originally it had perfect flowers, but that after bearing twice or thrice on the same roots the plants degenerate and become either pistillate or staminate. He says, “Hovey’s seedling strawberry, at first, was a perfect sort in its flower, but at this moment more than half the plants in this country have become pistillate.”
Mr. Hovey himself states the contrary on p. 112 of his magazine for 1844. He denies that there are two kinds of blossoms to his seedling, and says, “the flowers are all of one kind, with both pistils and stamens, but the latter quite short and hidden under the receptacle.” This is the common form of all pistillate blossoms, and shows, in so far as Mr. Hovey’s observations are to be trusted, that, at its starting-point and home, Hovey’s seedling was, as with us it now invariably is, so far as we have ever seen it, a pistillate plant.
STRAWBERRIES.
Directions for the culture of the strawberry will vary with circumstances; as, whether it is raised for private use, or for market. But, for whatever purpose cultivated, respect must be invariably had to the fact of staminate and pistillate flowers, or male and female. Each flower contains the rudiments of both the male and female organs. But the male organs are more or less defective in one set of plants and the female in another “and, in the Hudson and some others, it amounts to a complete separation of the sexes. In some of the male (staminate) varieties more or less of
the blossoms are also partially perfect in the female organs and will produce some fruit.