From this passage we gather that the cherry Theophrastus knew was the Sweet Cherry, _Prunus avium_; the description shows it to be the same large, tall tree now naturalized in open woods and along roadsides in many parts of the United States. From the fact that Theophrastus describes the tree and the bark in more detail than the fruit we may assume that the cherry was more esteemed in ancient Greece as a timber-tree than as a fruit-tree. Curiously enough the name the Greeks at this time used for the Sweet Cherry is now applied to _Prunus cerasus_, the Sour Cherry. "Kerasos" was the Sweet Cherry in ancient Greece and from kerasos came _cerasus_, used by many botanists as the name of the genus. That the Sweet Cherry should by the use of _avium_ be denominated the "bird cherry" is clear since birds show much discrimination between cherries, but why the Sour Cherry should be given the specific name _cerasus_, first applied to the Sweet Cherry, is not apparent. Pages are written in the old pomologies and botanical histories as to the origin of the word _cerasus_. Pliny's statement that Lucullus called the cherry _cerasus_ from the town from which he obtained it, Kerasun in Pontus, on the Black Sea, is, in the light of all who have since looked into the matter, a misconception. To the contrary, commentators now agree that the town received its name from the cherry which grows most abundantly in the forests in that part of Asia Minor. The name, according to all authorities, is very ancient--a linguistic proof of the antiquity of the cherry. To sum up, the cherry comes into literature first from Greece in the writings of Theophrastus. There can be but little doubt, however, but that it had been cultivated for centuries before Theophrastus wrote. Whether one or both of the two cherries were domesticated by the Greeks, beginning with their civilization, or whether cultivated cherries came to Greece from Asia Minor, is not now known. It is very probable that some of the several varieties grown in Greece came under cultivation through domestication of wild plants; others were introduced from regions farther east. [14] Theophrastus, Book III, Chap. 13. THE SWEET CHERRY POSSIBLY THE PARENT OF THE SOUR CHERRY