Besides these well-recognized species of cultivated cherries there are several others that play a much less conspicuous part in horticulture. _Prunus fruticosa_ Pallas, the Dwarf Cherry of Europe, is much cultivated, more especially its botanical variety _pendula_, as an ornamental and somewhat for its fruit. According to Wilson,[11] _Prunus involucrata_ Koehne is grown for its fruit in the gardens of China; the fruits, he says, are "small and lacking in flavour." The fruits of _Prunus emarginata_ Walpers are eaten by the Indians on the Pacific Coast and the early settlers used the species as a stock for orchard cherries. _Prunus jacquemontii_ Hooker, the Dwarf Cherry of Afghanistan and Tibet, is occasionally in culture for its fruit and as a park plant; so also is another dwarf cherry from southwestern Asia, _Prunus incana_ Steven. _Prunus pseudocerasus_ Lindley, the Flowering Cherry of Japan, is a well-known ornamental the world over and in Japan is used as a stock for orchard cherries for which purpose, as we have suggested in the discussion of stocks, it ought to be tried in America. [11] Wilson, E. H. _A Naturalist in Western China_ =2=:27. 1913. CHAPTER II THE HISTORY OF CULTIVATED CHERRIES THE ANCIENT USE OF CHERRIES History casts no direct light upon the period when the cherry first came under cultivation. Undoubtedly primitive men in all parts of the North Temperate Zone enlivened their scanty fruit fare with wild cherries. Cultivated cherries, we know, had their origin in the Old World. But history tells us nothing of the period when Europe and Asia were unbroken forests inhabitated by savages who eked out a precarious subsistence by the pursuit of the chase and from meagre harvests of wild grains, fruits and vegetables. On these continents agriculture and rude civilization began in ages immemorial and cultivated plants diversified, enriched and adorned the landscapes long before the first written records. Our knowledge of how wild cherries have been remodeled into the orchard and garden varieties of today--of what the methods and processes of domestication have been--is, therefore, doubtful and limited, for the mind and hand of man had been deeply impressed upon the cherry long before the faint traditions which have been transmitted to our day could possibly have arisen.