Prof. Budd is writing some interesting European letters to the Iowa Homestead. Of strawberries in England he says: "The strawberry here exceeds my expectation. The crops are as bountiful and the fruit as large as that of our best varieties in Iowa, but the quality is far below our Charles Downing, or even Crescent and Cumberland Triumph. Some of their best varieties are of recent origin and have the same parentage as ours."

Visiting the grounds of Mr. Henry Vilmorin, in France, he says: " Here is a part of the grounds where all the races of the strawberry have been grown for years. We have the impression in America that it would be useless to introduce any variety of the strawberry from France. For the prairie States this seems a great mistake. Many varieties on these grounds with an admixture of the great thick-leafed species known as Fragraria Chiliensis would luxuriate in our climate. For the first time I here saw the fruit of the true blue Chili strawberry. The fruit is very large, white (or rather a yellowish white), but the quality is rather low when compared with our Charles Downing. Some of its crosses, however, with the Fragaria Vesca are very high in quality, yet they have very largely the leaf of the Chili species. Unlike the Fragaria grandiflora of South America (to which most of our best varieties can be traced) the Chili species has vigorous runners like our American wild species.