During the past fifteen years the writer has given considerable attention to the sand cherry, as growing wild in the Black Hills, Wyoming, eastern Colorado, northern Nebraska, and in various places in the Dakotas. The conclusion reached from observation and testing hundreds of seedlings on the experiment-station grounds at Ames, is that it is a promising fruit for development by selection and probable crossing with the cultivated cherries and plums. In Colorado we have tested varieties fully as large as the English Morello cherry and about as free from astringency. Discredit was thrown on this variety by growing and distributing its seedlings. If this variety and others we have tested had been grown by budding and grafting, or from root-cuttings, they would have become valuable, especially at the North, where cultivated cherries are not easily grown.

In connection with its seedling production and selection, with a view to improvement, it will prove valuable as a stock for dwarfing the cherry and plum (186. Propagation of Plum, Prune, Apricot, and Peach). All varieties of the plum worked upon it have made good union and have been dwarfed to some extent in size of tree and have borne fruit earlier and more continuously than when on plum-roots. So far, our success in using it as a stock for the cherry has not been as favorable, as only a small per cent of the buds inserted lived. But the few that succeeded seemed to make a good union and have made durable dwarfed trees. Perhaps we have yet to learn the proper season for performing the work.