The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1892-07-23

shape, and were content with it, es-
teeming it justly a great luxury. The
strawberry leaf was enwrought in the
ducal coronet, and appears there to-day,
and on the coat of arms and other in
sigma of the realm. The oft-quoted re-
mark that the genial angler, Izaak
Walton, has preserved for us from DIR.
Boteler must have been elected by the
wood strawberry, Doubtless God
could have made better berry, but
doubtless God never did" How heart
lily the English and Americans of the
nineteenth century indorse this noble
sentiment, and quote it with satisfac-
ton while enjoying the big, luscious
strawberries of to-day. which are as
truly an outcome of the nineteenth CEN
fury as the express train or the phono-
graph
It is from the two great American
species. the hardy and easily adaptable
Fragaria Virginiana, the wild straw
berry of New England and of the states
east of the Rocky mountains, and Fra
garia Chilensis that grows wild on the
Pacific slope from Oregon to Chilli that
the strawberries of commerce and of
the garden. both in America and abroad,
have been developed.
In old English the name is written
''Streowberie, which is certainly
charming, and there is pretty tradi-
ton that it was given from the early
custom in England of selling wild
Strawberries threaded on grass straws
Some old writer's suppose it was derived
from the wandering habit of the plant,
straw being corruption Of the Anglo
Saxon ''strae," from which we have the
English verb stray, and so straeberle
or streowberie.
DIR. Pryor suggests that the name
was given from it's straw-like halms,
the little seeds seen in the juicy recep-
tacle of the fruit, and that really adds
SO much to it's beauty. The genus
Fragaria takes its name from the per-
fume of the fruit, and an early scientist
asserts that even the leaves are fra
grant, and gives the whole genus a
high place in his catalogue of "those
flowers and plants that do best perfume
the air"
Grant Allen tells us that the straw
berry has very long pedigree; that it
is the offspring of the little three
leaved, white potentilla, a group of
very lowly and primitive roses, the
earliest and simplest of the great world
wide rose family. The potentilla is
Familiarity known as the little yellow
cinquefoil that stars the grass every
where in spring time and blooms on
through the summer. The white po-
tentilla was once yellow, like cinque-
foil. The habit of the plant is to grow
in the tall grass and by waysides, over
run with heritage. To obtain light and
air the stems grew tall, the three upper
leaves reached far up to the sunlight,
while the two lower ones gradual
iy disappeared; SO that the English
plant that once had five leaves
came to have only three. But how
was the edible straw berry developed
from the fruit of a potentilla? The
fruit consists of several dry, one-seeded
nuts, SO tiny that they look like seeds
crowded on a thick receptacle or flow
er-stalk, without any signs of color or
succulence. In some potentillas this
receptacle became spongy and even
pulpy. Such fruit was eagerly caught
up and eaten by the birds, and the
seeds transmitted by them to other and
more favorable localities where the
plants yielded larger and sweeter fruit.
This happening often, the edible wild
strawberry was gradually developed.
In English hedgerows the white poten
tilla and wild strawberry are still seen,
growing side by side, SO alike that only
botanical eye can perceive any differ.
ence, except in the fruit. Yet in the
wild strawberry the leaves are larger
and more erect, the stem taller, the
petals rounder and purer white,
while the flowers open into a
wider saucer shape. Grant Allen,
after making this statement, adds if the
strawberry plant really descended from
the white potentilla, it has outstripped
its progenitor, making its way like a
colonizing race round the entire girdle
of the two temperate zones; while its
ancestor, strictly European species, is
degenerating, and is apparently dying
out in northern and western Europe.
If this species of potentilla should dis
appear, then the distance between the
genus Fragaria and the genus Poten-
tilla would be far greater than at the
present day. Grant Aliens theory is
very interesting, although it does not
admit that Adam and Eve ever had
straw berry. Transcript.
President Carnot leads a very busy
life, and his long day, from till l a IN,
is crowded with work. Immediately
after rising he takes cup of tea, after
which he receives his ministers, reads
his dispatches and sees visitors: he then
breakfasts. The afternoon is taken up
with various duties and such exercise as
he can find time to take. At o'clock
he again receives visitors and examines
and signs DEGREES He dimes with his
wife and son at o'clock, which is the
only part of the day which he feels at
liberty to devote to his family. At g
o'clock he goes to his study, where he
reads or writes till /. He is fond of
both the opera and the drama, and is a
fair painter, delighting to go down to
the forest of Fontainebleau and sketch
for an hour or so.
Unlike the City Article.
Little Country Girl-There! You've
Lot 81 ;ol, o,aayv, oil cr-er y-O1,r