We have been discussing the cherries of common cultivation--the Sweet Cherry and Sour Cherry of the orchards, the fascicled cherries to which the botanists give the group name, Cerasus. But there is another group, the Padus cherries, well worthy of brief mention. The most noteworthy representatives of Padus are the bird cherry (_Prunus padus_) of the Old World and the choke cherry (_Prunus virginiana_) of the New World. These Padus cherries are distinguished botanically in having their flowers borne in racemes, that is, in long clusters of which those nearest the base of the shoot open first--rather than in the short-clustered fascicles of the Cerasus group. The cherries are small and almost or quite black. The Padus cherries are but sparingly cultivated but undoubtedly they are capable of some improvement under more thorough cultivation. DISTRIBUTION OF CULTIVATED CHERRIES The cherry is one of the most commonly cultivated of all fruits and the many varieties of its several forms encircle the globe in the North Temperate Zone and are being rapidly disseminated throughout the temperate parts of the Southern Hemisphere. For centuries it has been, as we shall see in the history of the species, one of the most valuable fruit-producing trees of Europe and Asia--an inhabitant of nearly every orchard and garden as well as a common roadside tree in temperate climates in both continents. From Europe, as a center of distribution, the cherry has played an important part in the orcharding in temperate regions of other continents. In North America varieties of the cherry are grown from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island on the north, to the Gulf of California, Texas and Florida on the south, yielding fruit in a greater diversity of soils and climates in Canada and the States of the Union than any other tree-fruit. The Sour Cherry is very cosmopolitan, thriving in many soils; is able to withstand heat, cold and great atmospheric dryness, if the soil contain moisture; and, though it responds to good care, it grows under neglect better than any other tree-fruit. The Sour Cherry, too, is rather less inviting to insects and fungi than most other stone-fruits, being practically immune to the dreaded San José scale. On the other hand the Sweet Cherry is very fastidious as to soils, is lacking in hardiness to both heat and cold and is prey to many insects and subject to all the ills to which stone-fruits are heir; it is grown at its best in but few and comparatively limited areas, though these are very widely distributed. USES OF THE CHERRY