62 THE CHERRIES OF NEW YORK 



orchards of the tree for the mere purpose of using the fruit to fatten their 

 hogs-/ on some plantations, as many as forty bushels are said to have 

 been knocked down to the swine in the cotirse of a single season."^ 

 The second quotation is from Lawson's History of Carolina.^ 

 " We have the common, red and black cherry, which bear well. 

 I never saw any grafted in this country, the common excepted, which 

 was grafted on an Indian plum stock, and bore well. This is a good way, 

 because our common cherry trees are very apt to put scions all around 

 the tree for a great distance, which must needs be prejudicial to the tree 

 and fruit. Not only our cherries are apt to do so, but our apples and 

 most other fruit trees, which may chiefly be imputed to the negligence 

 and unskillfulness of the gardner. Our cherries are ripe a month sooner 

 than in Virginia." 



CHERRIES IN THE MIDDLE WEST 



At a surprisingly early date the cherry, with the apple, peach, pear 

 and plum, was being grown far inland in the New World. Southeastern 

 Michigan was settled in 1701 at Detroit and within a half-century settle- 

 ments had been made at Vincennes, Indiana; Kaskaskia and Cahokia, 

 Illinois; and at Saint Louis and several other points in Missouri. The 

 orchards and gardens of the early French settlers in these states live in 

 the traditions of all the settlements; but much more substantial evidence 

 was to be found a century ago, and in the case of the apple and pear may 

 still be found, in the venerable trees of all the tree-fruit in and about 

 these old French posts. " The homes of these pioneers," so good an 

 authority as Parkman tells us, " were generally placed in gardens sur- 

 rounded by fruit trees of apples, pears, cherries and peaches." Were 

 proof lacking of these early plantations, it might be assumed that people 

 so fond of horticulture as the French would not long be unmindful of the 

 value to themselves and their posterity of plantations of fruit trees. 



CHERRIES ON THE PACIFIC COAST 



The history of the cherry in America is not complete without some 

 mention of its introduction, culture and the development of new varieties 

 on the Pacific coast. Indeed, it is not too much to say that at no time 

 nor at any place in its whole history has the cherry made greater advance- 

 ment than during the last half-century in Oregon, California and Wash- 

 ington — naming the states in order of their contribution to cherry culture. 



' Beverley History of Virginia p. 260. 



' Glover Philo. Trans. Royal Sac. 1676-1678, vols. XI-XII, p. 628. 



' Lawson History of Carolina 183. 1714. (Reprint of i860.) 



