THE PLUMS OF NEW VOKK. 37 



in the lake -dwellings of Robcnhausen which can be no other than those 

 of Insititia. 



The authentic written history of this plum may be said to have begun 

 with or a little before the Christian Era. The records of the cultivation and 

 development through the early centuries of the present chronology and the 

 Middle Ages to our own day may be found in the herbals, botanies, pomo- 

 logies, agricultural and general literature of the past two thousand years. 



Prunus insititia now grows wild in nearly all temperate parts of 

 Europe and western Asia — from the Mediterranean northward into Nor- 

 way, Sweden and Russia. The botanists of Etirope very generally agree 

 that its ' original habitat was in southern and southeastern Europe and 

 the adjoining parts of Asia, and that elsewhere it is an escape from culti- 

 vation. Hooker ' says that Prunus insititia grows in western temperate 

 Himalaya, cultivated and indigenous, from Gurwhal to Kashmir, the type 

 being that of the " common yellow -fruited BuUace." A few botanical 

 writers hold that it is trul}' wild in the parts of Europe where now found 

 growing. There are also not a few botanists who, as has been stated in 

 the discussion of the Domestica plums, unite the Insititias with the Domes- 

 ticas, and others who combine these two with the Spinosa plums in one 

 species, Prunus communis.'' 



It is possible that the species is occasionally found naturalized in 

 eastern United States; several botanists so give it. 



Wherever the habitat of the Insititia plums may have been, practically 

 all writers from the Greeks and Romans who first mention this fruit to those 

 of the present time, connect the cultivated varieties in one way or another 

 with the old Semite city, Damascus. It is almost certain that the 

 Syrians or Persians were the first to cultivate these plums, and that they 

 were unknown in Europe as domesticated varieties until the Greeks first 

 and the Romans afterward came in intimate contact with the people of 

 the Orient. Thus it is often stated in the old pomologies that Alexander 

 the Great brought these plums from the Orient after his expedition of con- 

 quest and that some centuries later Pompey, returning from his invasion 

 of the eastern countries, brought pltuns to the Roman Empire. 



The history of the Insititia plums in America has been given in the 

 main in the discussion of the Domestica plums, for the varieties of the two 



•Hooker Fl. Brit. hid. 2: 315. 1879. 



' The reader who desires fuller information regarding the botany of this species should con- 

 sult the references given with the botanical description of Prunus insititia. 



