"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."