68 THE CHERRIES OF NEW YORK 



The Mazzard, or at least the Sweet Cherry, has probably been more 

 or less used as a stock since the earliest cultivation of this fruit. The 

 Greeks and Romans practiced budding and grafting centuries before Christ's 

 time and when the cherry came to them as a domesticated fruit, at least 

 three or four centuries before Christ, they undoubtedly made use of bud- 

 ding and grafting' to maintain varieties and in the case of the Sour Cherry, 

 if they had it, and they probably did, to avoid the suckers that spring 

 from the roots of the trees. The literature of fruit-growing is scant and 

 fragmentary during the Middle Ages but beginning with the herbals in 

 the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries there are many treatises on fruits 

 and botany and in several of these the use of the wild Sweet Cherry, the 

 Mazzard, is mentioned.^ 



In America the Mazzard as a stock probably carne into use soon after 

 the establishment of Prince's nursery at Flushing, Long Island, about 1730, 

 budding and grafting seeming to have been little practiced in the New 

 World before the founding of this nursery.* The use of the Mazzard 

 as a stock is mentioned probably for the first in Coxe's Fruit Trees,*^ the 



' Varro (B. C. 117-27), as we have seen on page 47, tells when to graft cherries and discusses the 

 process as if grafting cherries were a common operation. 



^ In The Country-Man's New Art oj Planting and Grafting, written by Leonard Mascall, 1652, the 

 writer says, " Sower Cherries . . . will grow of stones, but better it shall be to take of the small Cions 

 which do come from the roots; then plant them. 



" Ye must have respect unto the Healme Cherry, [a sweet cherry of the time! which is graft on the 

 wild Gomire [Mazzard] which is another kind of great Cherry, and whether you do prune them or not, 

 it is not materiall; for they dure a long time." 



R. A. Austen, in his Treatise of Fruit Trees, 1653, writes, " Concerning Stocks fit for Cherry-trees, 

 I account the black Cherry stock (Mazzard) the best to graft any kind of Cherry upon. Yet some say 

 the red Cherry stock is best for May-Cherries. But the black Cherry stocks are goodly straight Plants 

 full of sap and become greater trees than the red Cherry trees." 



John Reid, The Scots Card'ner, 1683, writes, " Dwarfe Cherries on the Morella, or on the common 

 Red Cherrie. Or on that Red geen which is more Dwarffish than the black." 



John Lawrence, The Clergyman s Recreation, 1714, declared that, " Black Cherries (Mazzard) are 

 the only Stocks, whereon to raise all, the several sorts of Cherries." 



' " The practice of grafting and inoculating in America is but of modern date. It was introduced 

 by Mr. Prince, a native of New York, who erected a Nursery in its neighborhood about forty years ago. 

 But since the late American revolution, others have been instituted in this and some other parts of the 

 United States. Mr. Livingston has lately established one, not far from the city of New York, which can 

 vie with some of the most celebrated ones in Europe. May he, and others, who have undertaken in that 

 useful branch of business, meet with encouragement and success. Nothing in the e.xtensive field of Horti- 

 culture can afford more agreeable amusement or yield more solid satisfaction and advantage." Forsyth 

 on Fruit Trees, Albany, N. Y., 1803:278. 



* " The cherry is propagated by budding and ingrafting — from its disposition to throw out gum 

 from wounds in the vessels of the bark, the former mode is most generally adopted. The heart cherries 

 do not succeed well on any but the black Mazard stocks, but round or duke cherries do as well on MoreUo 



