At the end of the Nineteenth Century the plum ranked third in commercial value among orchard products, being surpassed by the apple and the peach. The increase in number of trees and bushels of fruit for the whole country for the decade ending with 1899 was remarkable, being for trees 334.9 per ct. and for bushels of fruit 243.1 per ct. These great increases were due to very large planting of plums for prunes on the Pacific Coast and to the widespread distribution during these ten years of native and Triflora varieties. It is very doubtful if the percentage of increase has been nearly so great during the present decade. It is likely that the development of rapid transportation and refrigerator service between the great plum-growing region of the far West and the markets of the East has caused a decrease in trees and production in the eastern states. Plum-growing, as with the growing of all fruits, is confined to localities geologically, climatically and commercially adapted to the industry. If we take New York as an example we find that plums are grown largely only in ten of the sixty-one counties, according to the census of 1900. These with the number of trees in each are as follows: Niagara 184,133, Ontario 92,917, Seneca 59,205, Monroe 57,246, Schuyler 48,336, Orleans 41,985, Yates 32,742, Albany 32,373, Erie 30,281, Wayne 30,047. Over 62 per ct. of all the trees in the State are in these counties and probably they produce more than 90 per ct. of the plums sent to market. A canvass of the acreage of four hundred plum-growers in New York shows that the following in order named are the leading commercial varieties: Bradshaw, including Niagara, which is identical, Reine Claude including its several near variations, Italian Prune, German Prune, Lombard, Shropshire, Grand Duke, Washington and Gueii. Abundance and Burbank are as widely distributed as any of these, chiefly owing to the zeal with which nurserymen have sold these varieties, but are seldom grown exclusively in commercial plantations, and their popularity is now on the wane as is also the case with Red June which has been largely planted. Varieties of native plums are hardly grown in New York though now and then they are found in home collections and there are a few small commercial plantations of them.