42 
orous and healthy as they were when we gray-headed chaps were boys, 
for their surroundings had been changed, greatly changed. Their old 
companion plants were nearly all gone; new plants, usurpers, had takeu 
their places and their environment was changed. 
These new plants were mauy of them very injurious and detrimental 
to the vigor of the trees, and with the advent of man had come his herds; 
they tramped the ground down hard over their roots ; they laid bare 
the surface of the soil to the direct rays of the sun by eating the herb- 
age. Things injurious to the foliage and fruit of the trees, in the shape 
of new insects and new diseases, were introduced, but with all of this 
a few wild plum thickets survived and matured plums. Why these did 
mature fruit under these adverse circumstances, and why the selections 
we made of a few fine plums from perhaps some of the most fruitful of 
these same thickets could not be made to mature a plum with all the 
care and petting we could give them, when planted in our garden or or- 
chard, to explain this, to give the reasons why, and to show how easily 
all can have this valuable and delicious fruit in abundance, is the mo- 
tive of preparing this paper for publication. 
And now I will begin my task. I was born here (Marshall County, 
Illinois) in 1834, and can therefore well remember the country as it was, 
and the wild plums as they were before the Plum Curculio made its 
first destructive showing here in 1845. Then we had these plums 
everywhere ; u the woods were full of them.” The valleys of the smaller 
streams were almost one continuous and uubroken plum thicket from 
source to mouth. The edges of the prairies were skirted with them. 
They were the most plentiful and useful of all our wild fruits. 
As a boy I was passionately fond of fruit of all kinds, and the lo 
cation of all good wild fruits that I could find was stored up in my 
memory for future use. 
Many of the wild plums, as I remember them, growiugin our woods 
were ver} 7 poor in quality — many good, a few very good, and a still 
smaller proportion of them very good and very handsome. 
About the year 184 i I found growing in the edge of a plum thicket a 
beautiful young tree, with a few large bright golden plums on it, kissed 
by the sun until their cheeks blushed crimson, and, when ripe, of deli- 
cious, honeyed perfumed flavor, large, oblong, and most beautiful. The 
next fall it was fairly loaded with its glorious fruit. I determined to 
secure this prize and have it all my own. I took it up very carefully, 
transplanted it into the garden, and tended it with the greatest care; 
it grew finely in its new home, but never matured a fruit ; it bloomed 
and set fruit freely, but it soon all fell off, but they were not stung by 
the Plum Curculio ! It was before the advent in great numbers of 
that now numerous pest. 
I next tried the European or Garden riuin ; they bloomed, fruited, 
but every plum was destroyed by the Plum Curculio before maturing. 
