68 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 
ROSACEA, 
The genus Pyrus is widely and generally distributed through the temperate parts of the northern 
hemisphere ; from thirty to forty species may be distinguished, the largest number inhabiting south- 
central and eastern Asia. In North America the genus is represented by seven species, of which five 
are small trees and two are shrubs of the eastern states ; 
* in Europe, where the genus is distributed from 
Great Britain and Scandinavia to Spain, southern Italy, and Greece, eight or nine species with many nat- 
ural varieties are recognized.’ Pyrus is spread through the mountain regions of the Orient, and abounds 
in the Himalayas with twenty-two species,’ and in China and Japan,’ where botanists recognize fourteen 
or fifteen species.° 
Pyrus is chiefly valuable to man for the fruits of Pyrus Malus,’ the Apple, and of Pyrus com- 
munis, the Pear, which supply him with important articles of food, and with alcoholic liquors. 
Mrcrome.es. Flowers in eymose corymbs ; calyx-lobes decidu- 
ous ; ovary 2 to 3-celled ; styles free or united. Fruit small, glo- 
bose, umbilicate. Leaves simple. 
Sorsus. Flowers in ample compound cymes ; ovary 2 to 4, usually 
3-celled ; styles 3. Fruit subglobose, berry-like, crowned with the 
thickened and often incurved persistent calyx-lobes. Leaves un- 
equally pinnate, the leaflets conduplicate in vernation. 
1 These both belong to the section Aronia and are distributed 
through all the country east of the mid-continental plateau from 
Nova Scotia to Florida and Louisiana. They are : — 
Pyrus arbutifolia, Linneus f. Syst. ed. 13, Suppl. 256. — Bot. Mag. 
t. 3668. — Torrey & Gray, Fl. N. Am. i. 471.—Chapman, Fl. 
128. — Watson & Coulter, Gray’s Man. ed. 6, 164. — Sargent, Gar- 
den and Forest, iii. 416, f. 52. 
Mespilus arbutifolia, Linneeus, Spec. 478. 
Pyrus nigra, Sargent, Garden and Forest, iii. 416. 
Pyrus arbutifolia, var. nigra, Willdenow, Spec. ii. pt. ii. 1013. 
Mespilus arbutifolia, var. melanocarpa, Michaux, Fl. Bor.-Am. i. 
292. 
Pyrus arbutifolia, var. melanocarpa, Hooker, Fl. Bor.-Am. i. 
204.— Torrey & Gray, J. c.— Chapman, J. c. 129.— Watson & 
Coulter, J. c. 
2 Nyman, Conspect. Fl. Europ. 240. 
8 Boissier, EV. Orient. i. 653. 
4 Hooker f. Fl. Brit. Ind. ii. 372. 
5 Franchet & Savatier, Enum. Pl. Jap. i. 138. — Maximowicz, Bull. 
Acad. Sci. St. Pétersbourg, xix. 169 (Mél. Biol. ix. 164).— Forbes & 
Hemsley, Jour. Linn. Soc. xxiii. 254. 
® Of the different sections of the genus, Malus is eastern and 
western North American, European, and Asiatic, one species being 
now, through cultivation, widely naturalized beyond its original 
home. Pyrus is southern European, western Asiatic, and eastern 
Asiatic. 
Aria is northern European, western Asiatic, Himalayan, and 
Aronia is eastern North American. Micromeles 
is Himalayan. Sorbus, the most widely distributed of the sections 
into which the genus is divided, is spread over the boreal and ele- 
vated portions of the three continents. 
7 Linnzeus, Spec. 479. — De Candolle, Prodr. ii. 635. — Maximo- 
wicz, l. c. 165. — Brandis, Forest Fl. Brit. Ind. 205.— Hooker f. 
[h@, 
Malus communis, Desfontaines, Hist. Arb. ii. 140. — Boissier, 1. c. 
656. — Decaisne, Nowv. Arch. Mus. x. 135. 
The native country of Pyrus Malus is uncertain ; it is believed to 
be indigenous in the northwestern Himalayas, where it ascends to 
an elevation of nine thousand feet above the level of the ocean and 
of eleven thousand four hundred feet in western Thibet (Hooker f. 
1. c.), and in Anatolia, where, on the mountains of Trebizond along 
eastern Asiatic. 
the southern shores of the Black Sea, it forms forests of considera- 
ble extent (Boissier, 7. ¢.). In southern and central Europe it has 
existed either in a wild or cultivated state since prehistoric times 
(A. de Candolle, Origine des Plantes Cultivées, 186) ; and in some 
parts of the eastern United States it already grows spontaneously 
(Britton, Cat. Pl. N. J. 99). 
Pyrus Malus has been cultivated in Europe since the days of the 
ancients, and from time immemorial in India, Cashmere, and north- 
ern China. 
zones, and thousands of varieties have been obtained from it by 
It is the most valuable fruit-tree of the temperate 
selection and cultivation, or by crossing its cultivated varieties with 
Pyrus prunifolia (Willdenow, Spec. ii. pt. ii. 1018.— De Candolle, 
Prodr. ii. 635) or perhaps with varieties of Pyrus baccata. It is 
from these crosses that the best varieties of the cultivated Crab- 
apples have been obtained. 
5 Linneus, 1. c. 479. — De Candolle, 7. c. 633.—Boissier, 1. c. 
653. — Brandis, 1. c. 203. —Hooker £. 1. c. 374. 
Pyrus communis grows naturally in nearly all the elevated regions 
of Europe and in western Asia, especially in Anatolia, the southern 
Caucasian provinces, and northern Persia ; it grows spontaneously 
in northern and northeastern Europe and perhaps naturally in 
Cashmere and the northwestern Himalayas (A. de Candolle, 
1. c. 183). 
The Pear-tree, which has been cultivated in Europe from ancient 
times, has given rise to innumerable varieties, many of which were 
known to the Romans in the time of Pliny, and the lists of pomol- 
ogists now contain the names of hundreds of cultivated Pears 
(Decaisne, Le Jardin Fruitier, i. Poirier, 72. — Downing, The Fruits 
and Fruit-Trees of America, ed. 2,639) which have been derived from 
Pyrus communis, and from Pyrus nivalis (Jacquin, Fl. Austr. ii. 4, 
t. 107. — Decaisne, /. c, 326, t. 21), from which is derived the race 
of Pears with hard acid fruit cultivated for cider (A. de Candolle, 
1. c. 185), or from the intercrossing of the different species of the 
section Pyrus, which are sometimes believed to represent geo- 
graphical races of one widely distributed polymorphous species 
(Decaisne, /. c. 132). 
® Cider, which contains from four to ten per cent. of alcohol, is 
made from the juice of the ripe fruit of the Apple, which is pressed 
from the pulp and allowed to ferment in open casks ; at the end of 
two or three days the liquor is drawn off, put into fresh casks, and 
allowed to settle in a low regular temperature for thirty or forty 
days when the process is complete. Cider is of three qualities, 
rough, sweet, and bitter. The first is made by grinding unripe or 
carelessly selected fruit, the juice being allowed full fermentation, 
and the second is made from fully ripe sweet apples, the process 
of fermentation being checked before completion. Bitter cider 
owes its peculiarities of flavor to the character of the fruit from 
which it is made. Ciderkin is made by infusing with boiling water 
