270 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND PLANTS 



(Prunus americana), with its variations, from which many of our 

 best cultivated varieties are descended. 



Plums were cultivated by the Romans, but were not known 

 to the lake dwellers or other ancient people. They have been 

 cultivated, too, in China from early times, but the original stock 

 has not been certainly identified, though related species grew 

 wild in the neighborhood of the Caucasus and in the western 

 forests of the Chinese empire. 



The plum was native in all the northern United States, and 

 every pioneer has satisfied his "fruit tooth" and graced his table 

 many times from the stock found growing along the river bottoms 

 everywhere. Strangely enough, according to Bailey,^ our best 

 authority, no commercial variety has ever been developed from 

 northern native stock east of Michigan, but the wild plums to 

 the south and west have been prolific of good varieties. This 

 was probably because the cultivated European sorts succeeded 

 well in the north, making resort to the wild unnecessary, while 

 from Virginia south they were not satisfactory. Here resort was 

 naturally back to the wild. Thus necessity is the mother not 

 only of invention but of domestication as well. The Miner was 

 produced in Tennessee ; the Robinson in North Carolina ; the 

 Wayland "came up" in a plum thicket in Kentucky; the Golden 

 Beauty was " found wild " in Texas ; the Pottawattamie in Ten- 

 nessee ; and the Newman in Kentucky. The Wolf originated from 

 seed gathered from wild trees in Iowa, and the Rollingstone was 

 " found " on the banks of Rollingstone Creek in Minnesota.^ 



Every boy knows that certain trees or bushes produce nuts 

 or fruits much better than others of the same species. Every 

 neighborhood that grows wild fruit of any kind has its trees 

 or bushes which yield fruit of superior size or flavor, or both. 

 It is from such as these that many new varieties have sprung, 

 a fact to be borne in mind when we come to the discussion of 

 mutation later on. 



1 "Evolution of our Cultivated Fruits," p. 170. 

 as 1. 2 « Principles of Breeding," p. 133. 



