Were there not so many good Duke varieties of its season Reine Hortense would take high rank among hybrid cherries. Several qualities fit it admirably for home and somewhat for commercial plantations. To begin with, it is most excellent in quality, its flavor being a commingling of the refreshing acidity of the Sour Cherry and the richness of the Sweet Cherry, though to some there may be a little too much acidity for a first-class dessert fruit. The cherries are also handsome--large, round, bright, glossy red with a shade of amber and very uniform in size, color and shape. The fruit is especially attractive on the tree as it hangs on long stems in twos and threes thickly scattered and never much clustered. Unfortunately the fruit does not stand handling in harvesting and marketing quite as well as that of some other Dukes and is a little too susceptible to brown-rot for a good commercial cherry. The chief faults of the variety, however, are in the trees rather than in the fruit. The trees are but of medium size, are not as productive as some others of the hybrid sorts, are at their best only in choice cherry soils and demand good care. In Europe, Reine Hortense is much used as a dwarf and for training on walls. It would seem that its merits and faults, as it grows in America, are such as fit it preeminently well only for the amateur. Of the several accounts of the origin of Reine Hortense the one giving France as its home and Larose as its originator is here accepted as authentic. M. Larose of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Seine, a gardener of the imperial court, grew the original tree early in the Nineteenth Century from a seed of the Cerise Larose, a seedling of his introduction. Soon after the first mention of this variety, about 1841, there appeared the Louis XVIII, Morestin, Guigne de Petit-Brie and several others. The variety was seemingly rechristened by every nurseryman who got hold of it. At one time the name Monstreuse de Bavay was acceptable to many, it having been given to the variety by a Mr. Bavay of Vilvorde, Brabant, Belgium, about 1826. The theory that Reine Hortense comes true to seed and therefore has several strains has been discredited. The American Pomological Society recognized Reine Hortense in 1856, only a few years after being introduced into this country, by placing it on the recommended fruit list. In 1909, the Society shortened the name from Reine Hortense to Hortense but in this text we prefer to use the full name, thereby indicating clearly the person for whom the cherry was christened. [Illustration: REINE HORTENSE] Tree of medium size, upright-spreading, productive; trunk shaggy; branches smooth, dark reddish-brown covered with ash-gray, with a few large lenticels; branchlets rather slender, with short internodes, brown partly overspread with ash-gray, smooth, with inconspicuous, raised lenticels.