AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 435 



ORIGIN OF CHERRIES. 



Mr. Targioni in his work on the introduction of vegetables into 

 Italy, is of opinion that the wild cherry, common in the woods 

 of Italy, in many other parts of Europe, as well as in Asia, is 

 the first and only source of all the cherry trees now cultivated 

 for their fruit, Mr. Tai'gioni is a learned professor at Florence. 

 His views are in opposition to those of the majority of botanists, 

 who, after the example of De Candolle, admit four species of 

 cherries, viz : Cerasus Avium, or wild cherry, Cerastes Duracina, 

 or, bigarreautin, the Cerasus Juliana, o\ guignier cherry, and the 

 Cerasus Caproniana, or griottier cherry. 



Cherries^ then, are indigenous in Europe, a fact which contra- 

 dicts the assertion of Pliny (1,800 years ago). 



In fact, that great Roman naturalist pretended that there were 

 no cherries in Italy until Lucullus conquered Mithridates, in 

 about 680 of the Roman Republic, when he brought the first 

 cherry trees into the Republic ; and he goes on to say that in one 

 huncbed and twenty years that fruit tree was propagated through- 

 out the whole Roman Empire, even into Great Britain. From 

 all this talk of Pliny's the idea has generally prevailed that the 

 cherry came originally from Cerazonte, the modern Zefano, and 

 that the Latins called it Cerasus for that reason. It is, however, 

 possible that Lucullus may have imported the first cultivated 

 varieties of cherry; and that the Romans did not discover their 

 identity with their own wild cherry of their forests. It is how- 

 ever certain that cherries were known in Greece a long time be- 

 fore Lucullus lived. 



GUANO. 



In the month of June last, resolutions were adopted by the 

 Farmers' Club, recommending to all agricultural societies of the 

 United Sta'tes to ask our government to take possession of certain 

 uninhabited and unclaimed islands in the Pacific ocean, valuable 

 for their deposits of guano, which had been first discovered by 

 American citizens, and whose interest was represented by the 

 American Guano Company, established under the presidency of 

 Mr. Alfred G. Benson, of Brooklyn, Long Island. 



It is now proposed, and as we tliink, with perfect propriety, 

 that all the agricultural societies of the United States unite in a 

 petition to our government to take possession of all other islands 

 of like character, which have been or may be first discovered by 

 American whalers, or other Americans for the tencfit of the 



