l species often strip them of their leaves; the
tent-caterpillars pitch their tents among the branches and carry on
their dangerous depredations; the slug-worms, the offspring of a fly
called _Selandria cerasi_, reduce the leaves to skeletons, and thus
destroy them; the cherry-weevils penetrate their bark, cover their
branches with warts and cause them to decay; and borers gnaw galleries
in their trunks and devour the inner bark and sap-wood.' So you see
that, with such an army of destroyers, we may be thankful to get any
fruit at all."

"I'm glad to know the name of that fly," said Malcolm, who considered it
an additional grievance that it should have such a long name, "but I
won't try to call him by it if I meet him anywhere."

"I think it's pretty," said Clara, beginning to repeat it, and making a
decided failure.

"Fortunately," continued their governess, after reading it again for
them, "there are other things much more important for you to remember
just now, and I could not have said it myself without the book. And now
let us see what else we can learn about the plum. It is a native, it
seems, of North America, Europe and Asia, and many of the wild species
are thorny. The cultivated plums, damsons and gages are varieties of
the _Prunus domestica_, the cultivated plum tree. These have no thorns;
the leaves are oval in shape, and the flowers grow singly. The most
highly-valued cultivated plum trees came originally from the East, where
they have been known from time immemorial. In many countries of Eastern
Europe domestic animals are fattened on their fruits, and an alcoholic
liquor is obtained from them; they also yield a white, crystallizable
sugar. The prunes which we import from France are the dried fruit of
varieties of the plum which contain a sufficient quantity of sugar to
preserve the fruit from decay."

"Do prunes really grow on trees, Miss Harson?" asked Edith, who was
rather disposed to think that they grew in pretty boxes.

"Yes, dear," was the reply; "they grow just as our plums do, only they
are dried and packed in layers before they reach this country. We have
two species of wild plum in North America--the beach-plum, a low shrub
found in New England, the fruit of which is dark blue and about the
size of damsons; while the other is quite a large tree, and very showy
when covered with its scarlet fruit. In Maine it is called plum-granate,
probably from its red color," "I know what's coming next,"