In America the Mazzard as a stock probably came into use soon after the establishment of Prince's nursery at Flushing, Long Island, about 1730, budding and grafting seeming to have been little practiced in the New World before the founding of this nursery.[42] The use of the Mazzard as a stock is mentioned probably for the first in Coxe's _Fruit Trees_,[43] the second American treatise on fruits, published in 1817, and again in Thacher's _American Orchardist_, published in 1822.[44] Both authors, as the foot-notes show, speak of the use of this stock as if it were in common use in American nurseries. Neither mentions the Mahaleb. [Illustration: _PRUNUS AVIUM_ (MAZZARD)] The Mahaleb, _Prunus mahaleb_, it will be remembered from the description previously given, is a bush or bush-like cherry, sometimes but not often attaining the height and port of a tree. The top is thick, with rather slender ramifying branches bearing small, green, smooth, glossy leaves, which resemble those of the apricot more than they do the leaves of either species of orchard cherries. The fruits are at first green, then yellowish, turning to red and at full maturity are shining, black and so hard, bitter and astringent as to be scarcely edible. This brief description of _Prunus mahaleb_ shows that it is quite distinct from either our commonly cultivated Sweet Cherry, _Prunus avium_, or the Sour Cherry, _Prunus cerasus_, differing from either much more than the two edible species differ from each other. It is quite as far removed from the Sweet or the Sour Cherry botanically as the apple is from the pear, the quince, or the thorn and if anything more distantly related than orchard cherries are to plums. One would expect the wood structure of the Mahaleb to differ from that of Sweet or Sour Cherries very materially and that even if the union proved in budding or grafting wholly normal that there would be some difficulty in the proper passage of nutritive solutions between stock and cion. This cherry, as we have seen, is propagated almost entirely from seed though it may easily be grown from layers, cuttings and suckers. The American supply of Mahaleb stock comes from France. The Mahaleb seems to have come into use as a stock for other cherries in France having been first mentioned for this purpose by Duhamel du Monceau in his _Traite des Arbres Fruitiers_ in 1768.[45] Miller in his _Gardener's Dictionary_, 1754, describes the Mahaleb cherry and says it was "Cultivated in 1714 by the Duchess of Beaufort." This seems to be the first mention of its culture in England though Gerarde in _The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes_ describes it. Neither mentions its use as a stock. In fact, it seems not to have been mentioned as a stock in England until 1824 when Loudon in the _Encyclopedia of Gardening_ speaks of it as "the most effectual dwarfing stock."[46]