Of cherries on the continent, for this brief history, nothing more need be said. Most of the varieties that have been imported from Europe to America have come from England and we must, therefore, devote rather more attention to the history of the cherry in England than in other European countries. [22] Quoted from Müller, Hugo M. _Obstzüchter_ =8=:3. 1910. [23] _Ibid._ CHERRIES IN ENGLAND Cultivated cherries came to England with the Romans. _Prunus avium_ is indigenous in Great Britain but probably no care worthy the name cultivation was given these wild trees by the ancient Britons. Pliny states that the cherry was carried from Rome to Britain before the middle of the First Century--meaning probably some improved variety. In no part of the world does the cherry take more kindly to the soil than in England and no doubt this fruit became firmly established in Kent, where the Romans settled, before the downfall of the southern invaders. With the expulsion of the Romans and the subsequent influx of barbarians, agriculture, especially gardening and fruit-growing, became almost a lost art but still it is not probable that the cherry was wholly lost to cultivation during the Teutonic invasions of Britain. Fruit-growing could not have greatly prospered, however, in the centuries of strife with the barbarians which succeeded Roman rule in England; and a revival of cherry culture did not take place until the reintroduction of Christianity and the establishment of monasteries where, undisturbed by wars, the monks became notable horticulturists. They not only had opportunity in the comparative peace in which their lives were cast to grow fruit but many of them were men of superior intelligence and skill and from intercourse with the continental countries learned what plants were worth growing and how to grow them--the monasteries were the experiment stations of the times. Undoubtedly the monks in bringing to England treasures from the continent did not forget fruits and among them cherries. Passing by a considerable number of references which could be cited to show that cherries of one kind and another were cultivated in Britain from at least as early a date as the Ninth Century, we come to the discussion of this fruit by the herbalists of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Of the three great English herbalists, Turner published his work in 1538; Gerarde's, printed in 1596, was revised and greatly improved by Johnson in 1633; Parkinson's _Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris_, or Park-in-Suns Earthly Paradise--the author evidently a punster--was published in 1629. All of these contain as full botanical and pomological discussions of cherries as knowledge then permitted.