he very system under which another had had great success.
There were all kinds of theories, and probably all kinds of practice.
One grower declared that the ground must be made extremely rich, while
another asserted positively that strawberries grew better and bore more
abundantly on the poorest soil. One gentleman averred that the only
profitable plan was to raise the plants in distinct hills, keeping them
clear of runners; some one in the next paper denied this, and vowed that
he made more money by crowding his ground with all the plants that could
find room upon it to take root. I remember one correspondent who said
that letting the weeds grow would kill the strawberries; but there was
some one else who assured the editor, that, in his opinion, the
strawberries rather liked the weeds, because they shaded the ground.

How was it possible for me to discriminate between these contradictory
statements,--all made, moreover, by gentlemen who wrote as if each were
in himself a complete horticultural encyclopaedia? Though utterly
confused by them, and quite at a loss to know which plan of cultivation
to adopt, yet one fact seemed very prominent, and that was that any
person who was at all careful in keeping his ground mellow and
reasonably clear of weeds would be sure to have good crops.

What struck me as a little remarkable in this voluminous record of
experience and opinion was the circumstance of there being very few
female writers on the subject. There were many who wrote quite
eloquently on the culture of flowers, but only two or three who appeared
to have cultivated strawberries. Yet there were several accounts of
wonderful coverlets which some of them had made, containing many
thousands of pieces, with probably one or two millions of stitches. I
could not help concluding that this latter feat was only labor thrown
away, and that elderly ladies who undertake to produce counterpanes and
bedspreads with so much superfluous work upon them should be provided
with a sewing-machine. It was not very encouraging to observe that so
small a share of female attention had been directed to the
strawberry-culture. The only recorded efforts of this kind had been made
in gardens, where the beds, after being planted, were attended to by the
women of the family. It appeared that they could readily keep everything
in order, pull out the weeds, gather the fruit; and though the fact was
not mentioned, yet I presume they were able to put i