The following description of a new strawberry bearing the name of one of our most valued horticulturists, we take from the American Journal of Horticulture, which states it as the "substance settled upon by the Fruit Committee of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society".

"The plant is hardy, robust, vigorous, and very productive. The foliage is handsome and well developed; leaf, dark green, roundish, obovate, deeply serrated, of great substance, with stiff, short foot-stalks, and stands the extremes of heat and cold without injury. The flower-stalk is stiff and erect, the flowers perfect. The fruit is large, some specimens attaining to more than five inches in circumference; and many berries this year weighed more than an ounce avoirdupois each. Their color is brilliant crimson scarlet; form, obtusely conical; the flesh rosy white, very juicy, but sufficiently firm for market; flavor, rich and sprightly, inclining to sweet, with a distinct aroma of the Alpine or wood strawberry ; seeds, small; season, late.

"This variety was produced in 1861 by Mr. Marshall P. Wilder, from artificial impregnation of Hovey's Seedling with La Constante".

Watching, as we do eagerly, every project for advancing horticulture in all its departments, we look especially to an improved, education for young gardeners as one of the most powerful means of furthering the cause. Our profession is not a series of dead rules or authoritative laws, to be once mastered, and then known or forgotten for evermore. Neither is it, or ought it to be, an erratic series of progressions and restings, alternating with each other, - now marching onward under the banner of a Knight, a Loudon, or a Lindley, and anon standing still because no such leader appears. No; such is not the road to the highest perfection. Every individual worker in the wide field of horticulture should feel that his path must be one of progress from good to better, from better to best. Because others have labored, can be no excuse for us resting upon their labors, but is a legitimate reason why we should enter into their labors, and carry them forward to a higher level. The highest attainments of all who have gone, before us should be our starting-point on the highway of endless progression.

Each worker as he delegates his work to others should give the parting admonition - " Not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect," but you follow after, if it be that you apprehend that perfection in art and practice that I have failed to reach. To forget, so far as to rest in them, the things which are behind, and to reach forward to those that are before, must be our watchword. Always learning and never coming to the full knowledge of the truth, must express the state of our intellect and the purpose of our lives, if the garland of success is to enwreath our brows, and the grace of humility to adorn our characters. Between the fathomless mysteries of plant-life on the one hand, the immeasurable capacities of intellectual life on the other, and the difficulties inseparable to the control of human life in its relation to both, there is work enough to tax the strongest intellect and to try the soundest heart. But it is only by rising to the dignity and grandeur of our work that it can be properly done. While, therefore, fostering and developing to the utmost the marvelous capabilities of vegetable life, let us also carefully cultivate the intellectual life within and around us. Only thus can the progress of gardening become real, constant, cumulative.

Now, it is by far too much a thing of fits and starts. One great man acquires eminence, and it is years before the rank and file reach his high standard. They first oppose, then ridicule, then examine, then adopt, and finally rest at his point of progress. How all this happens, and how even eminence itself becomes a drag on the chariot wheels of progress, is most eloquently pointed out by a modern author in the following pregnant words:

It is true that an original man is persecuted in his lifetime and idolized after his death; but it is a less familiar truth that the posthumous idolaters are the legitimate successors and representatives of the cotemporary persecutors. The glory of the original man is this, that he does not take his virtues and his views of things at second-hand, but draws wisdom fresh from Nature, and from the inspiration within him. To the majority in every age, that is, to the superficial and the feeble - such originality is alarming, perplexing, and fatiguing. They unite to crush the innovator; but it may be that by his own energy, and by the assistance of his followers, he is too strong for them. -Gradually, about the close of his career, or, it may be, after it, they are compelled to withdraw their opposition, and to imitate the man whom they had denounced. They are compelled to do that which is most frightful to them - to abandon their routine. And then there occurs to them a thought which brings inexpressible relief. Out of the example of the original man they can make a new routine; they may imitate him in everything except his originality, for one routine is as easy to pace as another.

What they dread is the necessity of originating, the fatigue of being really alive, and thus the second half of the original man's destiny is really worse than the first, and his failure is written more legibly in the blind veneration of succeeding ages than in the blind hostility of his own. He broke the chains by which men wore bound; he threw open to them the doors leading into the boundless freedom of Nature and of truth. But in the next generation he is idolized, and Nature and truth as much forgotten as ever. If he could return to earth lie would find that the crowbars and files with which he had made his way out of the prison house have been forged into the bolts and chains of a new prison, called by his own name. And who are those who idolize his memory? Who are found building his sepulcher? Precisely the same party who resisted his reform; those Who are born for routine, and can accommodate themselves to every-thing but freedom ; those who in clinging to the wisdom of the past suppose they love wisdom, but in fact love only the past; and love the past only because they hate the living present; those, in a word, and slightly to change the language of the eloquent author, who set up the inertia of the dead past in opposition to the life and power of the actual present".

It would seem impertinent to attempt to add to the forcibleness of these words. They are applicable to men in all ranks of life, but especially so to gardeners, who have too often attempted to bind the vigorous freedom of vegetable and intellectual life by the narrow ties of red tape, and the green withes of a sunless routine. - Gardeners' Chronicle.

President Wilder Strawberry #1

The publishers of the American Journal of Horticulture announce that they will be unable to begin the delivery before the fall of 1869.

The President Wilder Strawberry #1

EDITOR Horticulturist : In your Editorial Notes for January, you speak of the native strawberry bearing the above name as only a moderate grower in the West • while the foreign variety of the same name is large, showy, of high quality, and very firm. I have no knowledge of the foreign kind; but my experience and observation with the native President Wilder, are directly at variance with the above statement. I set a few plants in the fall of 1869, also a few more in the spring of 1870. They occupy three different positions in my garden - one in clay, one in sandy soil, and the other in black loam. I think I did not lose a plant of those set out; and although the past season has been one of unusual heat and drouth, I must say I never grew any variety of strawberry which was more perfectly free from sun-burn or " dying out," than the President Wilder. Indeed, its habit of growth has been, so far, all I could desire. I had a few berries, the flavor of which was excellent, having a good deal of the character of La Constante. I noticed particularly the bright, lively color, fine size, and great firmness of the berries, and formed the opinion that they would bear carriage fully as well as Jucunda, or even Wilson. Should it prove, upon trial, to be sufficiently productive, I venture to predict for this variety great popularity and real value ; worthy of the honored name it bears.

I will add that I have taken some pains to inquire of my brother horticulturists of Ohio, both north and south, as to the performance of the President Wilder, and, with a single exception, their experience accorded perfectly with my own.

By the way, I notice "Porte Crayon" asks a remedy for "certain animalcule" which seem to be increasing and becoming more destructive among his strawberries. As I suppose he couldn't think of using powder and shot in this case, I venture to suggest that he treat them as we should the other "birdies" - bless their hearts by planting enough for himself and them too. Geo. W. Campbell, Delaware, Ohio.