52 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The cultivation of both the American and the old Japanese 

 varieties of the peach has been attempted in Yesso ; but, as 

 already indicated, with very poor success on account of the winter- 

 killing, not of the fruit buds merely, but of the tree itself. The 

 Japanese are not familiar with budding and, in Yesso at least, 

 propagate wholl}' from the stones. The old native sorts produce 

 a very inferior fruit. 



A kind of apricot is somewhat cultivated in Yesso. The tree 

 seems to be perfectly hardy and enormously productive ; but the 

 fruit is small and inferior. There, at least, it is propagated 

 wholly from the stones, and so far as I am aware there is but one 

 variety. 



Our varieties of cherries have been tried ; but though the Japa- 

 nese esteem the fruit as very delicious, and now, after the lapse 

 of fifteen years since its introduction, it still never retails for less 

 than twenty cents per pound, it is certainly very inferior to the 

 fruit as commonly produced here. 



"With brief mention of one other Yesso fruit, I will leave this 

 branch of my subject and pass on to consider some of the flowers 

 of Yesso. This is the peculiar fruit of a species of conifer {Ceph- 

 alotaxics drupacea) which grows as an uudershrub in ir.any of the 

 mountain forests. This shrub is sometimes as much as eight or 

 nine feet in height but usually rather less ; and the female plants 

 bear a stone fruit precisely like a plum in structure. It is of 

 about the size of the common pecau nut ; the flesh is proportion- 

 all}' about as thick as that of the plum and is very juicy and 

 remarkably sweet with a faint suggestion of the pine in its flavor. 

 Really at present of no practical importance, it has actually 

 seemed to me, as I have often jokingly said, that this fruit affords 

 a rare field for the quack-medicine man. A rich natural S3'rup, 

 with the flavor of the pine — what a chance for the production of 

 a specific for throat troubles, coughs, and consumption ! And 

 then it comes from Japan — that magic land whence come — of 

 all things — soap, which the Japanese never use, and sovereign 

 remedies for corns, with which their feet are never troubled. 



Of the flowers of Yesso I hardly know how to speak. In prep- 

 aration for writing this paper I looked through my collection of 

 dried specimens, with the intention of picking out a few of the 

 most attractive, and I find I have selected no less than sixty-four 

 as worthy at least of mention. Now do not be alarmed — I am not 



