PLUMS RIPEN. 205 



chains of the Caucasus and the Himalayas. The fruit 

 is eaten chiefly by the larger northern game-birds ; and 

 it has never been found worthy of systematic cultivation. 

 Our common sloe has a more southerly range and a 

 bigger fruit ; but even it in the wild state is very sour 

 and little relished except by our native birds. In south- 

 eastern Europe and central Asia, however, the sloes 

 grow larger and somewhat sweeter ; their bushes are 

 more tree-like and not so thorny as with us ; and the 

 whole plant approaches much nearer in appearance to 

 the cultivated plum. This southern variety, often dis- 

 tinguished as a separate species, but still linked to the 

 common northern blackthorn by infinitesimal gradations 

 of intermediate forms, is the wild stock from which the 

 earliest garden-plums were originally raised. Still more 

 southern in type is the ancestral cherry, which extends 

 in a doubtfully wild state as far north as Britain, though 

 here it appears rather to be a seedling straggler from 

 orchards than a truly indigenous tree. The apricot, 

 which belongs in all essential particulars to the plum 

 group, comes from still further south, being a denizen of 

 Armenia by origin, developed under the influence of 

 the great sub-tropical fruit-eaters, who feed upon it in 

 its native woodlands. Peaches differ from plums, and 

 especially from the transitional apricot, only in the 

 wrinkled character of the stone- -a protection apparently 

 against the teeth of monkeys or large rodents ; and 

 they belong originally to Persia, Afghanistan, and the 

 neighbouring regions. Their fruit represents the highest 

 level of size attained by the plum or almond group, 

 though they fall far short in girth and brilliancy of the 

 great tropical kinds produced in the regions of toucans, 



