THE PLUM 119 



industry in Spain and Portugal, and more especially 

 in Bosnia and Servia. 



The cultivated forms of Plum are extremely 

 numerous, the fruit varying in- colour from green, 

 pale yellow or red, up to the deepest purple-black or 

 purple-blue, in shape from globular to an elongated 

 oval or egg-shape, pointed or bluntly rounded at 

 either end or at both ends, and in size from less than 

 an inch to between three and four inches in diameter. 

 We can readily believe that some of our larger fruit- 

 eating birds may not unfrequently swallow the stone 

 of the fruit of the Sloe, which they take whole into 

 their mouths, and thus aid in the dissemination of 

 the species ; but it would be difficult to imagine this 

 to occur in the case of the Plum. The cultivated 

 forms vary also considerably in the size and shape 

 of the stones and of the kernels they contain; in 

 the flavour of the fruit, its season of ripening, and 

 other points; and so long-established and physio- 

 logically engrained have some of these variations 

 become, that they constitute races which will per- 

 petuate their characters by seed. The Green-gages, 

 the true Damsons, and the Egg-plums, for instance, 

 form races that are often true to seed; but as a matter 

 of practice, layering or, more often, grafting is most 

 commonly used as the method of multiplication. 



It is, of course, mainly as a fruit-tree that the 

 Plum is valued ; but if it were not so it might well 

 be esteemed for its timber. The very tough and hard 

 wood of the Blackthorn is never of sufficient girth 

 to rank as timber, but it is proverbial, especially in 

 Ireland, as the material for cudgels, and from its 



