CHERRIES.
There is no need of describing cherries, as everybody knows them well.
The birds are so fond of ripe cherries that we sometimes have difficulty in getting our share before the robins and thrushes have taken all. Birds frequently fly away with the cherries, eat the pulp, and drop the stone, which, of course, contains a seed, and this seed then often sprouts and grows into a cherry tree. We sometimes find good cherries growing in hedges and thickets, far from the orchard; these have been planted there by the birds.
The sweet cherry is not a native of this country, but was brought here from Europe. We have a number of wild cherries, however, whose fruit we do not esteem, but the birds are fond of it, and they are the means of planting a good many wild cherry trees over the country.
Plums, peaches, and apricots are delicious fruits with hard-shelled seeds. The fruit is gathered, the pulp eaten, and the stone thrown away. We do not eat the seed of the plum, peach, and cherry, as we do that of the hickory and butternut. We throw it away, and thus disperse the seed children of these fruit trees.
The birds spread the seeds of the wild plums as they do those of the cherries. The kernels of all these seeds are bitter and contain a very poisonous substance.
Cherry trees have beautiful white blossoms that come early in the spring, and the peach trees have lovely pink blossoms. The peaches bloom the earliest of all, and as their flowers come out before the leaves, they turn the world into a maze of pink beauty in the parts where the peach orchards are.
Wild plum.