EARLY ACCOUNTS OP PLUMS 171 



fruit as bigg as our ordinary bullis : others there 

 be, that doe beare fruite much bigger than peare 

 plumraes, their colour red, and their stones flat, very 

 delitious in taste." William Wood gives a more 

 explicit account of the wild cherries and plums, in 

 his "New England's Prospect," published in 1634: 

 "The Cherrie trees yeeld great store of Cherries which 

 grow on clusters like grapes ; they be much smaller 

 than our English Cherrie, nothing neare so good if 

 they be not fully ripe, they so furre the mouth that 

 the tongue will cleave to the roofe, and the throate 

 wax hoarse with swallowing those red Bullies (as 

 I may call them) being little better in taste. Eng- 

 lish ordering may bring them to be an English 

 cherrie, but yet they are as wilde as the Indians. 

 The Plummes of the Countrey be better for Plumbs 

 than the Cherries be for Cherries ; they be blacke 

 and yellow, about the bignesse of a Damson, of a 

 reasonable good taste." 



Wood's cherry is instantly recognized as the choke 

 cherry, and it is probable that this is the species 

 which the other writers had in mind, although it is 

 possible that the sand cherry or even the beach plum 

 may have attracted their attention and have been rec- 

 ognized as cherries. Their plum is undoubtedly the 

 common native wild plum, which has a wide range 

 from New England westward and southward. It is not 

 plain, however, what the white plum of Winslow may 

 have been. Alexander Young, in his "Chronicles of 

 the Pilgrim Fathers," says that in the original edi- 

 tion of Winslow, published in London in 1622, the 

 word "white" occurred as "with," which he calls "an 

 error of the press;" but inasmuch as there is no white 



