The Cherry -Laurel. 101 



in winter with a blanket. The susceptibility to damage 

 by severe frost which in England, every ten or twenty 

 years, brings so much sorrow to the cherry-laurel, would 

 seem to have been detected, or at all events foreboded, 

 on its first arrival. 



By 1688, according to Ray, the cherry-laurel had 

 become quite common in English gardens ; and now we 

 have many beautiful varieties, the handsomest of which, 

 and most distinct, for ornamental shrubbery purposes, is 

 the Colchican, introduced from Belgium in 1841. 



A very curious parallel exists between this plant and 

 the yew-tree, though they are in no degree related. In 

 both, the kernels and the leaves are poisonous; in both, 

 at the same time, the succulent portion of the fruit is free 

 from anything deleterious, so strange is the association 

 sometimes indulged in by nature, of good and evil in the 

 same production, life and death walking arm in arm. The 

 fruit of the yew is never gathered, like that of the cherry- 

 laurel, for table ; it is left to the thrushes, by which all is 

 soon cleared away : boys are apt to eat it, but then a boy 

 is an animal that will eat anything at any time. 



As with the Pomiferse, so in the plum-family there 

 appear to be several species which only await skill and 

 enterprise to be lifted to the rank of acknowledged fruit- 

 trees. First may be mentioned the Prunus cerasifera, 

 the "cherry-plum" or "Myrobalan plum," the cerisette of 

 the French, well so named, a dish of them more nearly 



