430 Proceedings of the Botanical Society. 



point. Among the ancients the rose was employed medicinally, at 

 their festivals, and at their sacred ceremonies ; also as an article of 

 luxury at their banquets, and for making unguents. The uses of 

 the rose among the Greeks and Romans were nearly the same, the 

 latter nation, however, using them more profusely, and setting a 

 higher value upon them. Anacreon was the first author whom Mr 

 Falconer could find to have mentioned the rose, and he flourished 

 about 600 B. c. Myrepsius, a medical writer of the 13th century, 

 was the latest author quoted. 



A communication from Mr Edwin Lees of Worcester was then 

 read, giving an account of a specimen of Pyrus domestica, Sm., or 

 Sorb-tree, now growing in Wyre Forest, Worcestershire. Mr 

 Lees thinks it probable, from the situation of Wyre Forest, on the 

 confines of three counties, Worcester, Salop, and an isolated portion 

 of StaflFord, that this locality for Pyru^ domestica may have been in- 

 advertently multiplied ; and that the station given by Dr Plot and 

 Ray, in the " moorlands of Staffordshire," possibly may refer to 

 the specimen in question, which, however, is situated in the parish 

 of Rock, in Worcestershire, about three miles from Bewdley. From 

 a close inspection of the locality, Mr Lees is inclined to think that 

 the tree alluded to is not there indigenous, although probably en- 

 titled to an antiquity of not less than 400 years. The vestiges of 

 a habitation and garden he thought might be traced in some 

 bricks and remains near the spot, and here he found solitary spe- 

 cimens of Ligustrum vulgare and Prunus domestica, the only ones 

 which he observed in the whole forest. The tree, when visited in 

 1836, was much dilapidated, and presented the appearance of ex- 

 treme old age in the battered state of its bole, great height, broken 

 lower branches, and tenuity and tortuosity of the upper ones, which 

 only bear flowers from the young shoots at their very ends. Fruit 

 is produced annually, and is eagerly gathered as a curiosity by the 

 country people, who look upon it as a charm, suspending it in their 

 habitations, and appearing to consider it a safeguard, while to the 

 mountain ash {Pyrus Aucuparia) they pay no sort of attention, al- 

 though they seem to be fully aware of the relationship between the 

 species, designating the latter the " Whitten tree," while the for- 

 mer is called the " Whitten pear-tree," the fruit very much resem- 

 bling a small jennet pear. The stations given for Pyr'>is domestica 

 in Cornwall .ind the Isle of Wight, Mr Lees thinks rest on doubt- 

 ful authority, and that its claims to being considered indigenous to 

 Britain would require to be based on a stronger foundation than 

 that'afl^orded by the solitary individual in Wyre Forest. 



Dried specimens of plants were presented from many members 

 of the society, rece.ved since I4th December last, along with ya- 

 yious donations to the library. 



I 



