190 The Cherry Tret. 



guages he had learned, and spoke with the same ease and fluency 

 as his own, found lime to write a treatise on botany in the Greek 

 language. His skill in physic is well know^n; there is even at this 

 day, a ccjehrated antidote, called Mithridate. 



It w^as in the 68th year, B.C. that Lucullus planted the cherry 

 tree in Italy, which 'was so well stocked,' says Pliny, 'that in 

 less than twenty-six years after, other lands had cherries, even as 

 far as Britain beyond the Ocean.' 



Some idea may be formed of the Roman gardens, by the luxu- 

 rious manner in which Lucullus lived in his retirement from Rome 

 and the public affairs. He had passages dug under the hills, on 

 the coast of Campania, to convey the sea water to his house and 

 pleasure grounds, where the fishes flocked in such abundance, that 

 what were found at his death sold for more than eight hundred 

 thousand dollars. Pliny mentions eight kinds of cherries as being 

 cultivated in Italy, when he wrote his Natural History, which was 

 A. D. 70. ' The reddest cherries,' says he, ' are called aproma; 

 the blackest, actia; the Cajcilian are round. The Julian cherries 

 have a pleasant taste, but are so tender that they must be eaten 

 when gathered, as they will not endure carriage.' The Duracine 

 cherries were esteemed the best, but in Picardy the Portuguese 

 cherries were most admired. The Macedonian cherries grew on 

 dwarf trees; and one kind is mentioned by the above author, 

 which never appeared ripe, having a hue between green, red and 

 black. He mentions a cherry that was grafted, in his time on a 

 bay tree stock, which circumstance gave it the name of laurea; 

 this cherry is described as having an agreeable bitterness. ' The 

 cherry tree could never be made to grow in Egypt,' continues 

 PUny, ' with all the care and attention cf man.' 



Lord Bacon has clearly elucidated what the ancients considered 

 the sympathy or antipathy of plants. 'For it is thus,' says this 

 great man, ' wheresoever one plant draweth such a particular juice 

 out of the earth, as it qualifieth the earth, so that juice which re- 

 maineih is fit for the other plant; there the neighborhood doeth 

 good, because the nourishments are contrary or several; but 

 where two plants draw much the came juice, then the neighbor- 

 hood hurleth; for the one deceiveth the other. 



The cherry, like many other kinds of fruit has had its sorts 

 so multiplied, by various graftings and sowing the seeds, that we 

 now enjoy a great variety of this agreeable fruit, and for a con- 

 siderable portion of the summer, as it is one of the first trees that 

 yields its fruit, in return for the care of the gardener. From the 

 ripening of the Kentish and the May Duke to the Yellow Spanish 

 and the Morells, we may reckon full one third of the year that our 



