The domestication of one or the other of the two generally cultivated species of cherries followed step by step the changes from savagery to civilization in the countries of Europe and of western Asia. For, as one sorts the accumulated stores of botanical and historical evidence, it becomes quickly apparent that both the Sweet and the Sour Cherry now grow wild and long have done so in the region named and that, from the time tillage of plants was first practiced in the Old World, this fruit has been under cultivation, feeble, obscure, and interrupted by war and chase though its cultivation may have been. Certainly the history of the cherry is as old as that of agriculture in the southern European countries and is interwritten with it. In beginning the history of a cultivated plant the first step is to ascertain where it grows spontaneously--where it may be found unplanted and unattended by man. This is the task now before us for _Prunus cerasus_ and _Prunus avium_, discussing them in the order named. [12] See quotation on page 45. THE ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED CHERRIES _Prunus cerasus_, of which the Montmorency is the commonest representative in America, is now to be found wild wherever Sour Cherries are much grown, for it is a favorite food of many birds which quickly scatter its seeds from centers of cultivation. Nearly all of the botanies of temperate regions in which agriculture is carried on name this cherry as an escape from cultivation into woods and hedgerows and along roadsides. The Sour Cherry, then, is now to be found truly wild in many parts of several continents. It is not so easy to say where the habitat and what the condition before the species was cultivated. But botany, archaeology, history and philology indicate that the original habitat of the Sour Cherry is southeastern Europe and the nearby countries in Asia.