16 BULLETIN 179, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
Mr. Barber does not state where his father-in-law lived, while — 
Mr. Downer’s account places the original tree in the neighborhood | 
of Columbia, Tenn., and states that at about 1850, the time when 
James Harvey, of Columbia, gave him an account of the origin of the 
plum, there were no conflicting statements in regard to it. The 
attempt was made to propagate this plum from seed as well as by - 
budding, and this resulted in considerable diversity in the variety 
grown as Wild Goose and differences of opinion concerning it. Some 
of these seedlings received local names, as the Nolan, Hog, Goose Egg, 
Tennessee, and King of Plums. The Wild Goose was introduced into 
Iowa before 1871 by H. A. Terry, who obtained it from W.S. Rainey, of 
Columbia, Tenn. It was also offered in 1871 by William Parry, of 
Cinnaminson, N. J., and this date evidently marks the beginning of 
its wide dissemination. 
Another event of particular importance in the development of 
fruits for the northern Mississippi Valley and the eastern Plains 
region was the introduction of the De Soto plum, this being apparently 
the first variety of Prunus americana to be extensively propagated 
and to attract attention to the horticultural development of this species. 
The history of this variety is given by C. G. Patten (59, p. 237), 
of Charles City, Iowa. The first settler on the land where this plum 
was found at De Soto, Wis., was an American by the name of Tupper, 
who located there in 1853 or 1854. The original settler sold the farm 
in 1855 to the Trayer brothers, who were Frenchmen. There were 
at this time three or four groves of wild plums on the farm, and these 
the new owners destroyed, with the exception of the one later known 
as Trayer De Soto and De Soto, which produced such superior fruit 
that it was preserved. The next possessor of the farm was a Mr. 
Steven Heal. At some time a small orchard must have been planted 
on the place with trees from this original wild grove, for such an 
orchard was described as consisting in 1881 of 60 trees, the largest 
having a trunk diameter of about 10 inches. The variety began to 
be propagated and disseminated about 1864 by a Mr. Hale, who lived 
at Lansing, Iowa, only a few miles from De Soto. 
The Bixby (72, p. 434), another americana plum, may be even older 
than the De Soto, but it seems to have been less widely grown. This 
variety was named for ‘‘ Father Bixby,” who settled in Clayton County, 
Towa, in 1847, and on whose place the plum was then growing. 
Forty years later the trees were still thriving. These varieties were 
the beginning, the first developments, in a species that before the 
close of the century was to furnish more varieties than any other 
native. 3 
While the first name for a native plum that may be termed varietal 
in the pomological sense seems to have been published in 1867, there 
have now been applied, either to varieties of the native species or to 
