THE MEDLAR 75 



be admitted that the tree is wild in Asia Minor and 

 Persia, if not also in Greece on the one side and in 

 China on the other. 



Such high authorities as Nyman and Sir Joseph 

 Hooker doubt its being truly wild elsewhere ; and 

 Pliny, it must be admitted, says that the Medlar was 

 unknown in Italy in Cato's time. He is, however, 

 undoubtedly speaking of the cultivated fruit-tree. 

 Fee considers the Medlar native in northern central 

 Europe, and French botanists generally express no 

 doubt as to its being truly wild in their own land. 

 We have ourselves repeatedly found it in a very 

 spinous, small-leaved, bushy form in dense thickets 

 and extremely wild-seeming woods in Normandy. 

 The late Professor Babington, in 1839, writes of it as 

 " truly wild " in Jersey, where it still exists. 



That the tree has been known, probably in a 

 cultivated form, in northern Europe, from the earliest 

 times of civilisation in that area, is clear from the 

 changes which its name has gone through from the 

 original Latin. Whilst the Italian Mespoli and the 

 Dutch Mespelhoom indicate the minimum of change, 

 the German has become Mispel, Mespel, and Nespel- 

 baum, the Spanish Nispero, and the French has been 

 modified from Mesplier and Meflier to Neflier. As the 

 English name Medlar does not seem even to occur 

 as early as the time of Chaucer, it would seem to be 

 rather of old French than of German origin, and may 

 indicate the Norman introduction of the cultivated 

 tree. William Turner just enumerates " Mespilus, a 

 Medlor tre," in his " Libellus de re herbaria," in 1538 ; 

 but is more precise in his " Names of Herbes," ten 



