61 



CHAPTER V. 



OF CHERRIES. 



Different Sorts ; and the Propagation, Plantings Pruning, and 

 Training of them. — Hovo to preserve them from Insects. 



1 HE cultivated Clierry is said to have come ori- 

 ginally from Cerasus, a city of Pontus, from which 

 Lucullus brought it, after the Mithridatic war, into 

 Italy. Tliey so generally pleased there, and were 

 so easily propagated in all climates into which the 

 Romans extended their arms, that, within the space 

 of a hundred years, they grew common as far as 

 the Rhine, and were introduced into Britain about 

 Ann. Dom. 55, * 



The Cherry belongs to the twelfth class of Lin- 

 naeus's System ; Icosandria Monogynia ; and is 

 named Prunus Cerasus. 



* It is supposed by many that Cherries were first introduced 

 into this country in the reign of Henry the Eighth ; but Lyd- 

 gate, who wrote his poem called " Lick-Penny," before the 

 middle of the fifteenth century, or probably before the year 

 1415, mentions them in the following lines, as being commonly 

 sold at that time by the hawkers in London streets : 



Hot pescode own began to cry, 

 Straberys rype, and Cherryes in the ryse, 



Ryce, rice, or ris, properly means a long branch ; and the 

 word is still used in that sense in the West of England. — See 

 Wartons Hist. ofEng. Poetry^ vol. ii. p. 367. 



