The prune, as an article of commerce, all writers agree, originated in Hungary in the Sixteenth Century and was at that time a very important trading commodity with Germany, France and southern Europe. If, as Koch surmises (see page 17), the prunes originated in Turkestan or farther east—and the statements of other botanists and writers tend to show that his view is correct—the spread of the varieties of this group westward is readily explained. In the migrations of the Huns, from western Asia to eastern Europe, in the first thousand years of the Christian era, some Magyar or Hun intent on cultivating the soil brought with him the prune-making plums which, finding a congenial home, became the foundation of the prune industry of Hungary in the Sixteenth Century. In subsequent commercial intercourse with western Europe the latter region was enriched by these prune-making plums from Hungary. In America this group is now by far the most important one commercially, though prunes were not introduced into this country until comparatively recent years. The early lists of plums do not include any of the prunes and even as late as 1806 McMahon only mentions in the thirty varieties given by him but one, “the Prune Plum.” William Prince in 1828 speaks only of the “monstrous prune,”[49] but in such a way as to lead one to believe that neither it, nor any other prune, was then cultivated in America.[50] In 1831 William Robert Prince in his _Pomological Manual_ describes from this group only the German Prune and the “Agen Date,” or Agen. Indeed, it was not until the beginning of the prune industry in California, about 1870, that the varieties of this group began to be at all popular though an attempt was made by the United States Patent Office to start the prune industry on the Atlantic seaboard by the distribution of cions of two prunes in 1854.[51] The growth of the prune industry on the Pacific Coast is one of the most remarkable industrial phenomena of American agriculture. About 1856, Louis Pellier, a sailor, brought to San Jose, California, cions of the Agen from Agen, France. Some time afterward a larger plum, the Pond, was also imported from France, supposedly from Agen, and to distinguish the two, the first was called Petite Prune, by which name it is now very commonly known in the far west. The first cured prunes from this region were exhibited at the California State Fair in 1863; commercial orchards began to be planted about 1870, and the first shipments of cured prunes were probably made in 1875.[52] In 1880 the output per annum was about 200,000 pounds; in 1900 the yearly capacity was estimated to be about 130,000,000 pounds, valued by the producers at $450,000.[53] The typical varieties of this group are the Italian, German, Agen, Tragedy, Tennant, Sugar, Giant, Pacific and the Ungarish.