For three months, commencing in March, our great eating berry. They hold, water, 90.9; proteids, .1; fat, .7; carbohydrates, 6.8; ash, .6. Fuel value per pound, 175. The various species belong to the genus Fragaria, and are of the rose family. The fruit as we eat it is not really the true fruit of the vine. The pistils are placed upon a convex receptacle, and this, when the ovaries are ripe, is much enlarged, and this is the fruit as we eat it or call it. The true fruit is the little ripened ovaries which look like seeds scattered all over what we eat as the fruit. Under cultivation the stamens of some varieties abort, and the blossom is thus not self-fertile; that plant is dioecious, and in raising the berries, practically, it is necessary with these dioecious plants to set a fertile or some monoecious kind about every third or fourth row. This makes the plant an interesting study, as the Indian corn plant is an interesting study. Here the silk is the pistils, and these must be impregnated by the pollen of the anthers at the top of the stalk, or no grains of corn will be produced. Here the stamens and pistils are in different flowers, or different parts of the same plant. The consumption of strawberries as food is enormous, and thousands and thousands of carloads are carried annually to the different markets. It is difficult to keep up with the changing varieties. The wild berries have the highest flavor and perfume. Cultivation to great size probably deteriorates flavor and perfume, but the fine-looking, large berries are the ones in demand.

Let me say in regard to eating all these berries with seeds: The old and the young should avoid overindulgence, or the seeds will pack the bowels and cause more or less trouble. In many they cause, especially the strawberry, urticaria, which comes from some idiosyncrasy of the individual, or from something they may accidentally meet in the bowel, which causes a ptomaine poisoning on a limited scale, evincing itself by the indigestion and the rash accompanying it.