XXVI.] THE ADVENT OF THE AMERICANAS. 425 



remains that we are speculating upon the botanical 

 origins of truits which have sprung from the wild 

 in our own Mississippi Valley within a generation 

 or two. With this lesson before us we may cease 

 wondering at the doubts respecting the origins of 

 those world-wide fruits which were in cultivation 

 when history began. 



But the evolution of native plums has not ended 

 here. With the settlement of the northwestern 

 prairie region, a new race of plums came into 

 notice, and these differ widely in fruit and tree from 

 those coming from the mid -country and the south. 

 There is no one variety of this class which stands out 

 clearly as a pioneer. Several well marked forms ap- 

 peared nearly simultaneously early in the sixties. 

 The chief of these are the De Soto, Forest Garden 

 and Quaker ; and about ten years later a very prom- 

 inent variety, the Weaver, was added to the list. One 

 variety of this class, the Wolf, is probably the oldest 

 native plum, with the exception of Miner, springing 

 from a planted pit. It was raised in Iowa over 

 forty years ago, from a pit taken from a wild tree. 

 Now, this northern type of plums springs from the 

 best known of our native species, Prunns Americana, 

 and there would appear to be no difficulty respecting 

 its botanical features. Yet, there is now a discussion 

 as to whether the group from which they have come is 

 one species or two, and some persons are convinced 

 that there are two. And another curious circum- 

 stance is yet unexplained — the fact that, while 

 Prunus Americana is distributed from Maine to 

 Colorado and south to the Gulf, it is only in the 

 states of the northern Mississippi Valley that culti- 



