A correspondent who notes that Shakespeare missed nothing, and who is a student of the great author, remarks that in Richard III, Act 3, Scene 4, the following passage occurs:

" My Lord of Ely, when I was last at Holborn, I saw good strawberries in your garden there. I do beseech you send for some of them".

But in those times the delicious berry as we have it was unknown. Dependence was had upon the Alpine, just as we see it now brought by children in Switzerland. In 1824 the Botanical Society of London instructed James Barnet, of Chiswick, to draw up a report of the kinds cultivated, and the result was propitious. In the beginning of this century the strawberry began to assume the proud position which it maintains. The first marked improvements were seedlings from American species. The Roseberry in 1810; the Downton in 1816; Kean's Seedling in 1823; the Elton Pine in 1828; whilst Myatt followed with his Pine, Prince Albert, Eliza and British Queen. On this side the ocean we have latterly seen vast improvements. Does any one know of a really perpetual bearer ?