Notes and Gleanings, 



281 



NOTES AND GLEANINGS FROM FOREIGN EXCHANGES. 



Early Rivers Cherry. — It is now many years since the Early Purple 

 Guigne cherry was distributed by the Horticultural Society. I have had it more 

 than twenty years, and always noticed with interest its earliness and excellence ; 

 but its delicate habit, it being liable to canker and gum, prevented its extensive 

 cultivation. It is but a few years since it occurred to me to improve it by rais- 

 ing seedlings from it ; and then again I found difficulty in procuring fruit thor- 

 oughly ripe, for the st-jnes from unripe fruit would not vegetate. This is a com- 



Early Rivers Cherry. 



men thing with early fruits ; the pulpy covering ripens, but not the seeds. At 

 last the orchard house came to my aid, and in the hot summer of 1865 some 

 stones from very fine ripe fruit were sown. In 1866 they made plants from one 

 to two feet high. In that summer their tops were cut off, and their buds placed 

 in some Mahaleb stocks. In 1867 they made a fine growth of some four to five 

 feet. In the autumn of the same year they were potted ; in 1868, in the orchard 

 house, they formed blossom buds ; in 1869 Early Rivers bore its first crop; in 



