418 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [ DECEMBER 
name of Linneus. At the same time he reduced the fourteen 
varieties given by Linnzus to eight of his own. So the consoli- 
dation has gone on, till now we have nothing left either in our 
botany or in our horticulture, except the names Prunus domestica 
and P. cerasifera, to preserve to us the early view of one of our 
most important fruits. 
It has seemed to me that so important a change is worthy of 
examination. And besides it will be of some present horticul- 
tural interest to know how many distinct types we have included 
in Prunus domestica, and to understand the vicissitudes of their 
several phylogenies. Just at present the work of hybridizing 
plums is assuming considerable proportions. Sundry varieties of 
Prunus domestica are being brought into these combinations, and 
the existence of old and more or less distinct types within the 
species comes to have a new significance. 
As soon, however, as we endeavor to acquaint ourselves with 
the Linnzan view of these cultivated plums, we meet with serious 
difficulties. Linnzeus had no types at all, in the technical sense. 
That is, he made his descriptions from literature and not from 
specimens. He did not even write fresh descriptions from his 
own garden. Instead of this he took the descriptions bodily from 
Bauhin’s Pinax, adding nothing but his own varietal names. 
The same descriptions, with slight modifications, had meanwhile 
been used also in Tournefort’s Jnstitutiones. 
The Prodromus \eaves us in a somewhat better position. For 
though Seringe took no pains to make clear the connection 
between his varieties and those of Linnaeus, he did, however, 
refer to certain definite types. The principal ones of these are . 
the figures and descriptions in the two editions of Duhamel’s 
Traité des Arbres Fruitiers. These figures and descriptions are 
fairly accurate and full, and, moreover, the varieties there recorded 
are nearly all described and figured in many other places, pat 
ticularly in Poiteau’s Pomologie Francaise, and many of them mete 
retained with us to the present day with no more variation 
than such fruits are subject to under the ordinary methods of 
bud propagation. With the help of Duhamel we are thus able 
