THE CHERRIES OF NEW YORK 47 



By such tokens does our author cast doubt upon his statement that 

 Luctillus had but yesterday, as it were, brought the cherry from Pontus. 



The seventh cherry is one " that grows on the banks of the Rhenus " 

 (Rhine), further described as " being a mixture of black, red and green," 

 and of having " always the appearance of being just on the turn to ripen- 

 ing." It is useless to add another guess to those of the many commentators 

 as to what this tri-colored cherry from the banks of the Rhine may be. 



The eighth description, that of the "laurel-cherry," applies to a graft 

 and not to a variety. Of it, Pliny says, " It is less than five years since 

 the kind known as the laurel-cherry was introduced, of a bitter, but not 

 unpleasant flavor, the produce of a graft upon the laurel." It is barely 

 possible that a cherry could be made to grow on a latirel five years but it is 

 extremely doubtful, as all modern horticultiirists who have tried it say, and 

 it is impossible to have such a graft bear fruit. Pliny was misinformed. 



The ninth and ten,th of Pliny's cherries, the Macedonian and the 

 Chamaecerasus, are probably one and the same, since but one cherry 

 that could possibly answer to the descriptions given could have been in 

 Italy at the time Pliny wrote. The cherry described, then, was almost 

 beyond doubt Prunus fruticosa Pallas, a synonym of which is Prunus 

 chamaecerasus Jacquin, perpetuating the name used by Pliny. This is 

 the European Dwarf Cherry, or Ground Cherry, which is now and was 

 probably then a wild plant in parts of Italy and which is very well 

 described by " a tree that is very small, and rarely exceeds three cubits 

 in height." 



We have accredited Pliny with having first described cherries in Italy 

 and discredited his account of their introduction in his own country, but 

 chiefly on inferential evidence. Just a few words of direct proof that 

 the cherry was long in cultivation by the Romans before Lucullus and 

 we have done with the introduction of the cherry into Italy and have 

 filled another gap between Theophrastus and our own times. Marcus 

 Terentius Varro (B. C. 117-27), one of the illustrious scholars of ancient 

 Rome, sometimes called the father of Roman learning, in his eightieth 

 year, as he tells us in his first chapter, wrote a book on farming — one, 

 which, by the way, may be read with profit by modem farmers.^ In book 

 I, chapter XXXIX, he tells when to graft cherries, discussing the process 

 not as if it or the cherry were new or little known but as if the cherry were 



' A very good translation of Varro on farming is one by Lloyd Starr-Best, published by G. Bell 

 & Sons, London. 1912. 



