190 THE PLUM FAMILY. 



divided in the Pyrus Ai-ia, and the upper half pinnatifid iii tlie Pyrus hybrida, 

 and in hoth cases remarkably white underneath ; the Pyracantha is almost as 

 common against walls as the Pyrus Japonica, its abundant orange-red berries 

 lasting, along with the leaves, throughout the winter, and making a house-front 

 look quite cheerful ; whUe mixed with other low-growing shrubs is very com- 

 monly seen the Cotonedster microphylla, a stiff, sturdy little bush, with small, 

 evergreen leaves, white and star-like flowers, and solitary crimson beiTies that 

 look hke drops of blood among the foliage. The remainder comprise various 

 handsome species of thom or 'Cratcegus, distinguished by their spines and large 

 stipules ; and different kinds of Mi'spilus and Cotone&ster. The most frequent is 

 the M. Canadensis, a small tree with pendulous racemes of white flowers, bloom- 

 ing in April, and leaves that in autumn become stained with the most vivid scarlet, 

 while in the uncoloured portions still as green as when they expanded. 



LIL— THE PLUM FAMILY. Dnipdcea or AmygditlecB. 



Trees and shrubs, with simple, undivided, oval, or lanceolate leaves, 

 usually serrated, and glandular towards the base ; flowers of five 

 distinct petals, inserted along with twenty or more stamens, on the 

 rim of the calyx, which is cup-shaped and five-lobed, and encloses the 

 free and solitary ovary. The latter ripens into a " drupe," that is to 

 say, a bony shell, enclosing the seed, itself being embedded in soft 

 pulp, overlaid by a coloured and separable skin, as in the plum and 

 the cherry. As in the Apple Family, from which the present is dis- 

 tinguished only by its fruit and secretions, the flowers are lively pink 

 or white, never blue, borne singly or in sessile umbels, and among the 

 earliest to open in the spring, when the rude gusts often wrench away 

 their petals as soon as opened, and strew the ground with them as if 

 with snow. 



Natives almost exclusively of the cold and temperate regions of the 

 northern hemisphere, few families supply those parts of the world with 

 a greater variety of agreeable fruits, as witness the plum and cherry, 

 already mentioned (the former including the damson and the green- 

 gage), the peach, the apricot, and the nectarine, the whole, in short, 

 of our "stone-fruits." Besides these, there are the almonds, both 

 sweet and bitter, different, as fruits, from the preceding, only in the 

 large size and nutty character of the seeds, and in the scantiness and 

 uselcssness of the exterior pulpy portion. Almost all the species con- 

 tain abundance of hydrocyanic or " prussic " acid, stored cither in the 

 leaves or in the kernels. It is this which gives the peculiar flavour 



