THE CHERRIES OF NEW YORK 39 



CHAPTER n 

 THE HISTORY OF CULTIVATED CHERRIES 



THE ANCIENT USE OF CHERRIES 



History casts no direct light upon the period when the cherry first 

 came under cultivation. Undoubtedly primitive men in all parts of the 

 North Temperate Zone enlivened their scanty fruit fare with wild cherries. 

 Cultivated cherries, we know, had their origin in the Old World. But 

 history teUs us nothing of the period when Europe and Asia were unbroken 

 forests inhabitated by savages who eked out a precarious subsistence by 

 the pursuit of the chase and from meagre harvests of wild grains, fruits 

 and vegetables. On these continents agriculture and rude civilization 

 began in ages immemorial and cultivated plants diversified, enriched and 

 adorned the landscapes long before the first written records. Our knowl- 

 edge of how wild cherries have been remodeled into the orchard and garden 

 varieties of to-day — of what the methods and processes of domestication 

 have been — is, therefore, doubtful and limited, for the mind and hand 

 of man had been deeply impressed upon the cherry long before the faint 

 traditions which have been transmitted to our day could possibly have 

 arisen. 



The history of the cherry, then, goes back to primitive man. Direct 

 proof of the ancient use of cherries is furnished by the finding of cherry- 

 pits of several species in the deposits of Swiss lake-dwellings, in the mounds 

 and cliff-caves of prehistoric inhabitants of America and in the ancient 

 rubbish-heaps of Scandinavian countries. There are but few regions in 

 which cultivated cherries are grown in which the inhabitants in times of 

 stress, or by choice in times of plenty, do not now use as food wild 

 cherries, some species of which grow in abundance and under the most 

 varied conditions, almost from the Arctic Circle to within a few degrees 

 of the Tropic of Cancer in a belt encircling the globe. It is probable that 

 all of the wild species which have furnished fruit to the aborigines or to 

 the modem inhabitants of a region have been sparingly cultivated — at 

 the very least if they possessed any considerable food value they have 

 been more or less widely distributed by the hand of man. But, curiously 

 enough, out of the score or more of species of which the fruit is used as 

 food as the plants grow wild, but two may be said to be truly domesti- 

 cated. These are the Sour, or Pie Cherry, Prunus cerasus, and the Sweet 



