When the first American fruit books were published at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century the Damsons and Bullaces were widely grown, for all writers give a relatively large number of varieties of these plums and speak well of them. Thus McMahon,[70] in his list of thirty plums gives six that belong here, ending his list with “Common Damson, etc.,” as if there were still more than those he enumerates. Prince, in his _Pomological Manual_, in 1832, gives at least eighteen sorts that may be referred to Insititia with the statement that one of them, the Early Damson “appears to have been brought to this country by the early Dutch settlers, or by the French who settled here at the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,” adding, “It is much disseminated throughout this section of the country.” At the end of the Eighteenth Century Deane’s[71] _New England Farmer or Georgical Dictionary_, in a discussion of plums in general says: “The most common plum in this country is the Damascene plum, an excellent fruit for preserving, which is said to have been brought from Damasam, hence the name.” The hardiness, thriftiness and productiveness of all of the varieties of this species commend them to those who cannot give the care required to grow the less easily grown Domesticas, and in America, as in Europe, these plums are to be found in almost every orchard and in many communities half-wild, thriving with little or no care. The fact that they are easily propagated, growing readily from suckers and coming true to seed is an added reason for their general distribution. The Insititia plums do not seem to hybridize freely with other species—at least there are no recorded offspring of such hybrids, though Koch believes the Reine Claudes to be a hybrid group between this species and the Domesticas and there is much evidence in the fruit to show that the French Damson is part Domestica. The tree-characters of the Insititia plums are such, especially as regards vigor, hardiness, productiveness and freedom from disease, as to seemingly make hybrids with them very desirable. That this species can be hybridized with Domestica, at least, is certain from work done at this Station where we have made a number of crosses between them. Four groups of plums, the Damsons, Bullaces, Mirabelles and St. Juliens, in all eighty-six varieties mentioned in _The Plums of New York_, may be referred to this species. There are so few real differences between these divisions, however, that it is hardly possible, logically, to sub-divide Insititia plums into more than two groups. But since the groups of plums given above are so often referred to in pomological works it is necessary to discuss them.