44 Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



be identified with Cydonia was quite natural. In all ages 

 men have been prone to name things from the towns or 

 countries where they first saw them, or from which they 

 were first received. To this day we ourselves speak of 

 " French beans" and "Turkey rhubarb," though in each 

 case the epithet is altogether wrong and misleading. 



The tree yielding this celebrated fruit grows to the 

 height of fifteen or twenty feet. The branches, always 

 numerous, are crooked and distorted; the leaves are 

 oval entire, downy upon the under-surface, dusky green 

 above, and deciduous ; the flowers, in figure resembling 

 apple-blossom, but larger and more open, are white, or 

 sometimes pale pink, and produced singly at the extremi- 

 ties of the twigs. The aspect of the tree when in bloom 

 thus becomes very pleasing. In due time the quince 

 itself arrives, in shape a sort of irregularly oval apple of 

 good size, when in perfection of a rich deep golden-yellow 

 colour, more or less downy, and exhaling a powerful 

 odour. When the entire crop is ripe, the display is one 

 again of rare beauty familiar in the southern counties, 

 and recommending the tree for decorative use, even when 

 there is little care for the fruit. A horizontal section of 

 the fruit brings to view a core of five large cells, consti- 

 tuting an elegant pentagon. In every cell there are many 

 seeds, invested with a kind of mucilaginous pulp, so that 

 the quince may always be told off-hand from an apple or 

 pear by this one feature, the apple and pear, as said 

 above, never having more than two seeds in each cell. 

 Another distinction is supplied in the large and leafy 



