24 THE PLUMS OF NEW YORK. 



year 1790 planted the pits of twenty-five quarts of Green Gage plums; 

 these produced trees yielding fruit of every color; and the White Gage 

 [Prince's Imperial Gage], Red Gage and Prince's Gage, now so well known, 

 form part of the progeny of these plums, and there seems strong presump- 

 tive evidence to suppose that the Washington Plum was one of the same 

 collection." In 1828 the Prince nursery was offering for sale one hundred 

 and forty varieties of plums which William Prince states ' " are a selection 

 only of the choicest kinds, in making which, the commoner fruits have 

 been altogether rejected." Of the kinds grown, there were over twenty 

 thousand trees. ^ To this nursery, to William Prince and to William Robert 

 Prince,' the fourth proprietor in particular, belong the credit of having 

 given plum -growing its greatest impetus in America. 



Other notable nurseries founded at the close of the Eighteenth Cen- 

 tury, which helped to establish plum culture in America, were those of the 

 Kenricks, of William Coxe, and of David Landreth and Son. The Ken- 

 rick Nursery was founded in 1790 at Newton, Massachusetts, by John 

 Kenrick, under whom and his sons, William and John A., the business 

 was continued until 1870.* During a large part of this period the Kenrick 

 Nursery probably grew, imported and disposed of a greater quantity of 

 fruit trees than any other nursery in New England. Coxe's nursery was 

 established in 1806, at Burlington, New Jersey, but he had been growing 

 fruit for many years previous and was thus a pioneer pomologist before 



' Ibid. p. 28. 



'Prince, William Treatise of Horticulture 23. 1828. 



' The frontispiece of The Plums of New York, showing a likeness of William Robert Prince, 

 dedicates the book to this distinguished American pomologist. It is appropriate that the following 

 biographical sketch of Mr. Prince, written for The Grapes of New York, should be reprinted here. 

 " William Robert Prince, fourth proprietor of the Prince Nursery and Linnaean Botanic Garden, 

 Flushing, Long Island, was bom in 1795 and died in 1869. Prince was without question the most 

 capable horticulturist of his time and an economic botanist of note. His love of horticulture and 

 botany was a heritage from at least three paternal ancestors, all noted in these branches of science, 

 and all of whom he apparently surpassed in mental capacity, intellectual training and energy. He 

 was a prolific writer, being the author of three horticultural works which will always take high rank 

 among those of Prince's time. These were: .4 Treatise on the Vine, Pomological Manual, in two 

 volumes, and the Manual of Roses, beside which he was a lifelong contributor to the horticultural 

 press. All of Prince's writings are characterized by a clear, vigorous style and by accuracy in state- 

 ment. His works are almost wholly lacking the ornate and pretentious furbelows of most of his 

 contemporaries though it must be confessed that he fell into the then common fault of following 

 European writers somewhat slavishly. During the lifetime of William R. Prince, and that of his 

 father, William Prince, who died in 1842, the Prince Nursery at Flushing was tlie center of the hor- 

 ticultural nursery interests of the country; it was the clearing-house for foreign and American 

 horticultural plants, for new varieties and for information regarding plants of all kinds." 



' Manning, Robert Hist. Mass. Hort. Soc. ,^3. 1880. 



