The end of the Seventeenth Century saw a great revival of agriculture in all of its branches on the continent; in England the revival began with the fall of the commonwealth. From this time the progress of cherry culture has been so rapid and so great that it would be an endless task to give even a cursory view of it--a task unnecessary, too, for succeeding the herbalists a great number of botanies, pomologies and works on agriculture were published to many of which reference is still easy. Moreover, the histories of varieties in this text carry us back quite to the beginning of the Eighteenth Century. There now remains for the history of the cherry but to sketch its introduction and culture in North America, an undertaking that can be done briefly and to the point, for the data are abundant, recent and reliable. Here, too, accounts of the origin of varieties and the development of the cherry may be looked for in the chapters which comprise the main part of the book. CHERRIES IN AMERICA The cherry was one of the first fruits planted in the fields cleared and enriched by our hardy American ancestry. From Canada to Florida the colonists, though of several nationalities and those from one nation often representing several quite distinct classes, were forced alike to turn at once to the cultivation of the soil as a means of subsistence. And while in all of the colonies the early settlers must have been busily engaged in the cultivation of cereals for the staff of life, in the South in growing cotton and tobacco for money and for purposes of barter, in the North in harvesting forest and fish products for bartering; yet the historians of the colonies notice so often and describe so fully and with such warmth of feeling the vegetables, flowers and fruits in the orchards and gardens of the New World that it is certain that the ground was tilled not only as a means of subsistence but because the tillers loved the luxuries of the land. What fruit better adapted to the uses of colonists than the cherry? It possesses in a high degree, especially the Sour Cherry, the power of adaptation to new environment and thrives under a greater variety of conditions than any other of our fruits unless it be the apple, which it at least equals in this respect. The cherry is easily propagated; it comes in bearing early and bears regularly; of all fruits it requires least care--gives the greatest returns under neglect; and the product is delectable and adapted to many purposes. We shall expect, then, in examining the early records of fruit-growing in America to find the cherry one of the first planted and one of the most widely disseminated of fruits. CHERRIES PLANTED BY THE FRENCH IN AMERICA