14 BULLETIISr 179, V. S. DEPAKTMENT OF AGRICULTUEE. 



them the name of Miner, in honor of his father-in-law, Mr. Miner. 

 D. L. Adan (1, p. 145), of Hawesville, Ky., says: 



This plum received its name from a Mr. Miner of Grant County, Wis., who took the 

 trees there from Illinois. 



Whether Maj. Hinckley really obtained his trees from the brother 

 of William Dodd, who went to Galena, or from Mr. Knight, can 

 scarcely be determined with certainty from the conflictiag statements 

 that have been published. Possibly both accounts are substantially 

 correct and the variety was taken into lUiaois, first from Tennessee 

 and a few years later from Ohio. Both accounts agree as to the pos- 

 session of the trees by Maj. Hinckley. There can also be little doubt 

 of how the name Miner came to be applied, and as early as 1869 the 

 variety was widely known by that name. 



The first mention of the name Miner in a publication is apparently 

 in the April number of the American Agriculturist, in 1 867 (54) , where 

 information concerning it is requested. This notice brought a reply 

 printed in the July number from N. C. Goldsmith, Middletown, N. Y., 

 which would indicate that the variety was quite widely disseminated 

 under the name Miner even at that time. A year later, in the Feb- 

 ruary number of the same paper, " W. W." (73), Grant County, Wis., 

 says: 



I have raised the Miner plum for five or six years; I got it from Mr. Miner, in Grant 

 Co., Wis., who bought his trees of a man in Illinois, who did not have any name 

 for them, so they were called the Miner plum. The true name is Chickasaw plum. A 

 Mr. Isabell, of Joe Davis Co., 111., has raised the same plum for more than twenty 

 years. 



Grant County is in the extreme southwestern part of Wisconsin and 

 joins on the north Jo Daviess, the county in which Galena is situated, 

 where the Miner was supposed to have been taken in 1824 or 1825. 

 The reference by Downing to Mr. Miner, of Lancaster, Pa., is undoubt- 

 edly an error for Lancaster, Wis. 



This Mr. Miner seems to have desired to assume the credit for having 

 originated the variety, according to the account written by Joseph L. 

 Budd (12), who says: 



A certain Mr. Miner brought this plum to Lancaster, Wisconsin, some sixteen years 

 since, with the statement that it was produced from pits planted by him of the Yellow 

 Egg or Magnum Bonum Plum [a variety of European origin] a number of years previous, 

 and that it had been disseminated alone from the sprouts taken from the original seedling 

 tree as planted by him. 



The variety is figured and described in the November number of 

 the Horticulturist (55) , in 1867, but it is preceded in point of description 

 by the Newman variety, described but not figured in the September 

 number of the same jom-nal (22). This note in the September 

 number, from Mr. Elliott, of Cleveland, Ohio, is of interest in connec- 



