nd the public
highways. As far as the eye could reach over the plains when passing
over the railways, the cherry tree indicated the location of the
highways and the division of estates. As we passed the highways running
at right angles with the track we could get a glimpse down the avenues
to a point on the plain where the lines seem to meet, and we were told
that unbroken lines along the highways were often found thirty to fifty
miles in length.

As a rule these street and division trees are of a race wholly unknown
in this country excepting a few trees of the Ostheim in Iowa and
Minnesota. They are classed in the books as Griottes with colored juice
and long, slender, drooping branches. The trees are smaller than our
English Morello with low stems, and neat round tops. While some other
races are hardy on this plain as far north as Warsaw in Poland and
Russia the Griottes are grown for three main reasons. (1) The trees are
deep rooted and so small in size that they do little shading of the
street or cultivated fields. (2) They rarely fail to bear full crops as
the fruit buds are hardier and the fruit buds expand later than the
Kentish and the other and more upright forms of the Morello. (3) The
fruit is less acid and richer in grape sugar than the Kentish forms
making it more valuable for dessert, culinary use, and above all for
making the celebrated "Kirsch wasser" which here takes the place of
wine. Some of the thin twigged Griottes with dark skins and colored
juice are as large in size as our Morello and nearly or quite as sweet.
That they will prove hardy and fruitful with us we can hardly doubt as
they grow on the dry plains of Northeast Europe where the Kentish forms
utterly fail. Why have they not been introduced? I once asked this
question of Mr. George Ellwanger, of Rochester, N.Y. He replied that in
the early days of their nursery some varieties of the Weichel type were
introduced in their collection. But the Eastern demand ran in the line
of the Heart cherries and the Dukes, and if sour cherries were wanted
for pies the Kentish forms with uncolored juice seemed to be preferred.
I suspect the difficulty of propagation and the inferior look of the
little thin twigged trees in the nursery had something to do with the
ignorance of our people of the merits of this hardy and fruitful race.
In the trying climate of the Swabian Alps, the Tyrol, and the east plain
of Silesia, Hungary, Poland, and South Russia, the tr