THE QUINCE. 45 



organs, and they are therefore employed to heal sore lips, 

 inflamed eyes, &c. The same gummy juice, extracted by 

 simply boiling the seeds in a little water, furnishes the 

 toilette with that " fixature " which puts a gentle restraint 

 on the straggling hairs of fair ones with flowing locks. 



The delicately tinged blossoms of the quince are similar 

 in structure to those of the apple and pear, but grow 

 singly, and are much larger, being about the size of a 

 wild rose. The fruit varies in form and size, but is 

 always downy when young and yellow when ripe ; and 

 offering externally nothing remarkably different from the 

 two before-mentioned fruits, was confounded by LinnaBus 

 with these its orchard brethren ; but on cutting it open, 

 it is found to contain in each of its five cells from 12 to 

 40 pips,* instead of only one or two, as is the case with 

 both apple and pearj a peculiarity which has sufficed to 

 assign it, in later systems of botany, to a separate genus. 

 Owing probably in part to the little attention paid to it 

 in modern days, but few varieties have arisen, and only 

 five sorts are generally grown in either England, Prance, 

 or America. The Apple-shaped (called by the ancients 

 the "male") Quince is a tree of weak growth, both the 

 leaf and fruit of which are small, but as the latter is of 

 fine colour and becomes very tender when stewed, it is 

 the most popular of the tribe in America, where the Pear- 

 shaped Quince in condemned as tough and of bad colour, 

 though pronounced by the French, on the contrary, to 

 be in every way preferable to the other. It is much 

 grown by them as a stock or mere in nurseries, and it 

 may have been from using it similarly for grafting pur- 

 poses that the ancients gave it the name of "female." 

 English nurserymen prefer to graft on the Portugal 

 Quince, a stronger, handsomer tree, bearing larger and 

 finer fruit, which when cooked turns a fine crimson or 

 purple colour, the only and great drawback to its other- 

 wise incontestable supremacy over the other kinds being 

 that it bears very scantily. These three varieties, though 

 cultivators observe great differences in them, are all reck- 



See Plate II., fig. 6. 



