Governor Stuyvesant was a farmer as well as a soldier and there is something in history and much in tradition of the Bowery Farm, which flourished on the site of the present Bowery in New York. This farm was planted and tended by "Peter, the Headstrong" when he was not disputing with his burgomasters, watching the Yankees and fighting Swedes and Indians. The orchards and gardens, according to all accounts, were remarkably fine and were kept in a high state of cultivation. Stuyvesant founded the farm during the stormy times of his governorship but did not live on it until the English took possession of New Amsterdam in 1664 when he retired to the land and devoted the eighteen remaining years of his life to agriculture. From the neighboring colonies and from abroad he brought many fruits, flowers, farm and truck crops. Fruits came to him also from Holland and were disseminated from his orchard up the Hudson. The cherry was one of the fruits much grown by the Dutch. It would be wearisome and would serve little purpose even to attempt a cursory review of the literature of colonial days in New York showing the spread and the extent of fruit culture by the Dutch. Travel up the Hudson and its branches was easy and within a century after the settlement of New York by the Dutch, cherries were not only cultivated by the whites, according to the records of travelers, naturalists and missionaries, but were rudely tilled by the Indians. For a long time after its introduction in New York, the cherry, in common with other fruits, was grown as a species--varieties and budded or grafted trees were probably not known. Fruit-growing as an industry began in New York and in America, with the establishment of a nursery at Flushing, Long Island, in 1730, by Robert Prince, founder of the nursery which afterwards became the famous Linnæan Botanic Garden. At what date this nursery began to offer named cherries for sale cannot be said but advertisements appearing in 1767, 1774 and 1794 show that budded or grafted named cherries were being offered for sale by the Princes. In 1804, William Prince, third proprietor of the famous Flushing nursery, prepared a list of the named cherries then under cultivation in America for Willich's _Domestic Encyclopaedia_, an English work which was being edited and made "applicable to the present situation of the United States" by Dr. James Mease. The following is Prince's list:[30] "May Duke, ripe in May and June: long stem, round and red, an excellent cherry, and bears well. Black Heart, ripe in June: a fine cherry. White Heart (or Sugar Cherry) ripe in June: white and red. Bleeding Heart, ripe in June; a very large cherry of a long form and dark colour; it has a pleasant taste. Ox Heart, ripe in June: a large, firm, fine cherry. Spanish Heart, ripe in June. Carnation, ripe in July, it takes its name from its colour, being red and white, a large round cherry, but not very sweet. Amber, ripe in July. Red Heart, do.