SS4< 



mSlORY OP THE VKGETABLE KINGDOM. 



Btonn, the whole trunk was struck to the earth 

 and destroyed. The root afterwards threw out 

 a number of vigorous shoots, all of which were 

 allowed to remain, and finally produced fruit. 

 It is, therefore, to be presumed that the stock of 

 the barren kind was the parent of this. Trees 

 were sent to Mr Robert Bai'clay, of Bury Hill, 

 in 1819; and in 1821 several others were sent to 

 the Horticultural Society by Dr llosack. 



Most of the varieties of the plum are propa- 

 gated by grafting or budding on the muscle, St 

 Julian magnum bonum, or any free growing 

 plums raised from seed or from suckers ; but for 

 a permanent plantation seedlings are to be pre- 

 ferred. The common baking plums, as the dam- 

 son, bullace, Wentworth, are generally propa- 

 gated by suckers, without being either budded 

 or grafted. Plumb-grafting is performed in 

 July or March; budding in July or August. 

 A middling light soil, neither too wet or too 

 dry, is best suited for this tree. 



All the sorts produce their fruit on small na- 

 tural spurs, rising at the ends and along the 

 Bides of the bearing slioots, of one, two, or tliree 

 years' growth. In pruning, the fi-uitful branches 

 should not be shortened, but tliinnings made of 

 cross placed or irregular branches. ■ 



The Cherry (prumis cerasus). The culti- 

 vated cherry is by some considered a distinct 

 species, while others suppose it a domesticated 

 variety of the wild cherry or gean. Besides being 

 prized for its fruit, the cheiTy is also a very 

 ornamental tree, and cultivated for this object 

 in shnibberies. The tree is a native of most 

 temperate countries of the northern hemisphere. 

 The small black is found not only in some parts 

 of England, but even in places among the Scot- 

 tish mountains, where it would be difficult to 

 imagine it to have been carried. It is gen- 

 erally said that the firat of the present cultivated 

 sorts was introduced about the time of Henry 

 VIII., and were originally planted at Sitting- 

 bourn, in Kent. The cherry orchards of Kent 

 are still celebrated. It seems, however, that 

 they were known mucli earlier, or, at any rate, 

 that cherries were hawked about London before 

 the middle of the sixteenth century, in the very 

 same manner as at present. The commencement 

 of the season was announced by one carrying a 

 bough or twig loaded with the fniit. Our pre- 

 sent popular song of " Cherry ripe, ripe I cry," 

 is very slightly altered from Ilerrick, a poet of 

 the time of Charles I. One of our old English 

 games, cherry-pit, consisted of pitching cherry- 

 stones into a little hole : — " I have loved a witch 

 ftver since I played at cherry-pit." * Shakspeare 

 also alludes to the same custom. 



The wild cheiry, of which there are a good 

 many varietiea, is a much more hardy tree than 



• Witch of Edmonton. 



any of those that produce the finer sorts of fruit; 

 and it is therefore much cultivated for stocks 

 npon wliich to graft the others, as trees so grafted 

 attain a larger size, are more durable, and less 

 subject to disease. At some of the ruined abbeys 

 and baronial castles there are found cherry trees, 

 chiefly black ones, which have attained the 

 lieight of sixty or eighty feet, and continue to 

 produce gi-eat quantities of fruit. These ancient 

 sorts are not confined to the warmer parts of the 

 country, but are met with in some of the north- 

 em counties of Scotland. Evelyn ranks the 

 black cherry amongst " the forest beny-bearing 

 trees, frequent in the hedges, and growing wild 

 in Herefordshire and many places." 



The cherry is generally undei'stood to have 

 been brought to Home, from Armenia, by Lu- 

 cullus, the conqueror of Mithridates. This was 

 about sixty-eight years before the Christian era; 

 and such was the fondness for the fi-uit, that 

 Pliny says, " in less tlian one hundred and 

 twenty years after, other lands had cherries, even 

 as far as Britain beyond the ocean." The cherry 

 is spread over Africa. In Barbary it is called 

 " The Beny of the King." Desfontaines (Ilis- 

 toire des ArlresJ contends, in opposition to the 

 received opinion, that the wild cherry is indige- 

 nous to France, and of equal antiquity with the 

 oak ; nor can we help thinking, from the situa- 

 tion in which we have seen wild cherries, that 

 the same may be the case with parts of the 

 United Kingdom. 



The transplantation of fruit trees from one 

 distant locality to another has been employed by 

 Hume as an argument to prove " the youth, or 

 rather infancy of the world," in opposition to 

 the opinions of tht)se who maintain that this 

 earth has existed, in its present condition, from 

 countless ages : — 



" Lucullus was the first that brought clierry 

 trees from Asia to Europe; though that tree 

 thrives so well in many European climates, that 

 it grows in tlie woods without any culture. Is 

 it possible that, throughout a whole eternitj', no 

 European had ever passed into Asia, and thought 

 of transplanting so delicious a fi-uit into his own 

 country ? Or if the tree was once transplanted 

 and propagated, how could it ever afterwards 

 perish ? Empires may rise and fall ; liberty and 

 slavery succeed alternately; ignorance and know- 

 ledge give place to eacli other ; but the cheiry 

 tree will still remain in tlie woods of Greece, 

 Spain, and Italy, and will never be afifected by 

 the revolutions of human society. 



" It is not two thousand years since vines were 

 transplanted into France, tliough there is no cli- 

 mate in the world more favourable to them. It 

 is not three centuries since horses, cows, sheep, 

 swine, dogs, corn, were known in America. Is 

 it possible that, during the revolutions of a whole 

 eternity, there never arose a Columbus who 



