The ninth and tenth of Pliny's cherries, the Macedonian and the Chamaecerasus, are probably one and the same, since but one cherry that could possibly answer to the descriptions given could have been in Italy at the time Pliny wrote. The cherry described, then, was almost beyond doubt _Prunus fruticosa_ Pallas, a synonym of which is _Prunus chamaecerasus_ Jacquin, perpetuating the name used by Pliny. This is the European Dwarf Cherry, or Ground Cherry, which is now and was probably then a wild plant in parts of Italy and which is very well described by "a tree that is very small, and rarely exceeds three cubits in height." We have accredited Pliny with having first described cherries in Italy and discredited his account of their introduction in his own country, but chiefly on inferential evidence. Just a few words of direct proof that the cherry was long in cultivation by the Romans before Lucullus and we have done with the introduction of the cherry into Italy and have filled another gap between Theophrastus and our own times. Marcus Terentius Varro (B. C. 117-27), one of the illustrious scholars of ancient Rome, sometimes called the father of Roman learning, in his eightieth year, as he tells us in his first chapter, wrote a book on farming--one, which, by the way, may be read with profit by modern farmers.[17] In book 1, chapter XXXIX, he tells when to graft cherries, discussing the process not as if it or the cherry were new or little known but as if the cherry were as commonplace as the other agricultural crops of the times. Varro effectually disproves Pliny to whose mis-statement we have given so much space only because for nearly 2000 years it has been generally accepted as the truth. The gaps in the history of the cherry are long. Athenaeus,[18] Tertullian,[19] Ammianus,[20] and St. Jerome,[21] Roman writers of the Third and Fourth Centuries, mention cherries but chiefly to repeat and perpetuate Pliny's errors. It was not until the Sixteenth Century--a lapse of 1400 years--that an attempt was again made to describe in full cultivated cherries. Sometime in this century, Matthiolus (1487-1577), a Tuscan and one of the eminent naturalists not only of Italy but of the world in the Middle Ages, in translating and annotating the medical works of the Greek writer Dioscorides, made a list of the fruit-trees then grown in Italy. As the second descriptive list of cherries this contribution of Matthiolus might be worth reprinting were it not, as in Pliny, that but few of his varieties can be certainly made out. He does, however, make a number of additions to Pliny's list but space does not permit a consideration of these; especially since Gerarde, writing less than a century later in English, so well amplifies Matthiolus that we shall print his account. [16] Bostock and Riley _Nat. History of Pliny_ =3=:322. 1855.