56 Fruits and Fruit-Tree s. 



mother will call her peevish, crying baby a kizilzick. 

 The Ottomans regard it as an infallible preventive of 

 diarrhoea. 



The Service was introduced into Britain most probably 

 by the Romans, but it never became common. A 

 solitary individual, of great age (being mentioned in the 

 "Philosophical Transactions" for 1678), stood in Wyre 

 Forest, near Bewdley, up till 1862, when, through the 

 carelessness of some gipsies, it was destroyed by fire. 

 On the strength of this, the Service has been thought 

 indigenous, but the Wyre Forest tree was no doubt a 

 descendant of ancient cultivation. Though rare, it is 

 not difficult to find examples. One in the Oxford 

 Botanic Garden fruited abundantly in 1884, as did the 

 great Claremont tree, sixty feet high, and nearly eight 

 in circumference at two feet from the ground. Two or 

 three venerable Services may be seen also at Ribston 

 Hall, Wetherby, Yorkshire. 



Unfortunately there is a good deal of misconception 

 over the Service. The name is often misapplied to the 

 common white-beam, Pyrus Aria. It is confounded 

 also with the Pyrus torminalis, a tree occurring in south 

 country hedges, but having leaves more like those of a 

 maple. The fruit of the torminalis, called the "wild 

 Service," is sometimes offered for sale, threaded upon 

 strings, to the length of a yard, but is next to worthless. 

 It is brought even to Covent Garden, and in some parts 

 of Northamptonshire, where the tree is abundant, is 

 carried in procession at village feasts. 



