Col. Wilder believes that the degeneracy or wearing out of varieties may often be traced to the exhaustion of proper elements in the soil, and to the bad manipulation of the plants. In the rage for novelties, described as the "best in the world," we meet with many disappointments, and sometimes become disgusted with their failures and cast them out as worthless without a fair trial. So also with some of the old kinds, which have not been so much cultivated as in former years, such as the Hovey, Jucunda, Triomphe de Gand and others which were once popular. The essayist thought it would be a wise measure for the society to offer a special premium for the restoration of those old, valuable varieties of fruits and flowers which have gone out of general cultivation. But from our experience it seems likely that much of the degeneracy of strawberries comes from disease which, once affecting a plant, becomes extended by runners. We fancy if strawberries are propagated from plants that have not the "spotted leaf," or other troubles, they would rarely "wear out."