H. H. Berger says:

"The principal fruits of Japan are the persimmon, chestnut, orange, different plums, loquat, Prunus tomentosa, some very poor sorts of peaches, apricots, a small and sour apple, and a very hard and tasteless pear. Their berry fruit is small and sour. The persimmon is raised all over the country; wherever you travel these stately, beautiful trees, with their glossy green foliage, greet the eye.

" After a most careful research I could only find the following varieties of plums indigenous to Japan: The Botankin or Kelsey's plum, which needs no description, being too well known; the Hattankin, which is in reality only a sub-variety of the Botankin, differing somewhat in coloring of fruit; the Nagate or Botan, a round, reddish blue plum, half early; the Shviata Bene or Uwase, called here the " blood plum," on account of its red flesh; the Nagame o Smomo, a yellow plum; the Shire Smomo, a whitish plum, late ripening (more of a gage), and one very early ripening plum, called Yosobe, a round, yellowish plum, with rich, red bloom overspreading it. The Pru-nus Mume is the commonest plum of Japan, a small, greenish fruit, extremely acrid and disagreeable. It is pickled in brine by the natives, and as such, much relished. Other varieties of plums, which have come into the market under the name of Japan Plums, are only European sorts which have come into the hands of the Japanese gardener, and are by them sold to ignorant parties as Japanese varieties.

Most Japanese gardeners will sell you an apple lor a plum tree, if you will only pay them".

The Phylloxera has at length become nearly as bad on the roots of the grape-vines in California, as in Europe. In some localities the plantations are nearly ruined. They are, however, doing as the wide-awake vineyardists of France are doing, grafting on the American stock. The varieties of the species Riparia are found to be the best. The insect attacks these vine roots as well as the roots of the European, but on account of the very fibrous rooting character, they do not suffer much. The young roots grow faster than the troublesome little insect can follow them. Hence these species of the grape are known as resistant grapes. Julius Dressel, of Sonoma, in California, has seventy acres grafted on many varieties of the Riparia section that are thriving wonderfully, and grafted grapes will soon be a leading industry in California.