io Plums and Plum Culture 



taken the study of the plums out of the hands of the 

 botanists. They have been obliged to do it. 



I have often heard good plum horticulturists say, 

 in speaking of the classification of varieties, that it 

 seemed to them that such and such a disposition ought 

 to be made, but that perhaps a botanist would think 

 differently. The man who says that gives unmerited 

 flattery to the botanist and misunderstands his own 

 position. The botanist has no- secret key to classifica- 

 tion. He knows nothing about a given specimen 

 except what he sees. If he is a trained botanist he 

 sees more than the untrained man in the street; but 

 even the best botanist cannot see so much in a plum 

 as the horticulturist who has watched it year in and 

 year out, in nursery and orchard, has seen it grow and 

 blossom and bear fruit. I have found some plum 

 cranks who have never been to college except in the 

 plum orchard, and who offer their opinions very diffi- 

 dently, but who have a fine sense of discernment when 

 it comes to questions of varieties, their distinctions 

 and classifications. Such men ought to appreciate 

 that they are really botanists within their own field, 

 just as much as the man who writes Ph. D. after 

 his name. 



Everyone who knows about the present position 

 of plum knowledge in this country will see how impor- 

 tant it is in a work like the present to take up the 

 strictly botanical side of plum classification. If the 

 practical plum grower will understand the argument 

 offered above, that he is himself a botanist in so far 

 as he has any personal knowledge of plums, he will 

 perhaps be more ready still to take an interest in this 

 necessary chapter which describes the various species 

 and botanical varieties. 



This is the basis of our horticultural classification, 

 Those men who have such strange notions of the 



