140 Improvement of tJie Native riimi. 



cussing them, except to say that few of them have any effect ; and those 

 that have merit require such an amount of care, labor, and persevering 

 attention, that not one person in a thousand attempts to apply them. They 

 may all be set down as impracticable. Are we, therefore, to say we will 

 have no plums ? 



There are four if not five or more species of plums indigenous to this 

 country ; to wit, the Chickasaw Plum {P. Chkasa), the Moose or American 

 wild plum {P. Americana), the Beach or Sand Plum {P. Mdritima), the 

 California Plum (/*. subcordatd), and perhaps the Myrobalan or Cherry 

 Plum {P. Myrobalafia). These have sported into numerous varieties, many 

 of them of considerable excellence. But the fact about them of the 

 greatest importance is, that most of them are less liable to the attacks of 

 the insects that prey upon the cultivated plum, and, so far as I have ob- 

 served, free from its diseases : in fact, there are sev^eral varieties that I 

 have never known to be attacked even when planted among infected for- 

 eign trees. In this fact is found the answer to my question ; and also 

 the demonstration, that we can have plums in spite of the curculio and his 

 allies. 



It is said that the native plum is not of sufficient excellence. Admit it. 

 What prevents us from making it so ? Were any of our fruits, in their 

 wild state, what they are now ? Did the Seckel Pear, the Spitzenberg Ap- 

 ple, the lona or Delaware Grape, or any of our luscious garden or orchard 

 fruits, originate in a wild state ? If so, the objection is good. But it is not 

 so. Through the same means that were used in perfecting them, or simi- 

 lar, I predict that our native plum-trees will yet produce fruit superior to 

 any foreign variety, and free from insects, and perhaps disease. 



The simplest plan to do this is to select the best we have, and from 

 their seeds obtain further varieties. Of the best of these, again plant seeds; 

 and but a short time will elapse before we have something near what we 

 want : at least, the wild habit of the tree will be broken up, and the tree 

 become tamed, and, at each reproduction, become more susceptible of im- 

 provement. If the thousands of horticulturists in the United States would 

 each plant a few seeds this year, more than a million of trees might be 

 produced ; and in three or four years, by grafting them on bearing trees, 

 they might be fruited. By concerted action, the object might be attained at 



