130 FAMILIAR TREES 



one can with difficulty persuade oneself that all three 

 of the varieties of Wild Pear recognised by our 

 botanists, with fruits seldom two inches long, and so 

 harsh in flavour as to be as unpalatable as a Crab- 

 apple, are merely the results of rapid degeneration. 

 Nor is there any a priori reason against the native 

 character of the Pear. It is in its distribution con- 

 fined to a limited area in Europe, not occurring south 

 of the Balkans, nor in the northern parts of Russia, 

 Sweden, and Norway. This agrees with its absence from 

 the North of Scotland ; whilst its presence in a wild 

 state in Ireland, which was never conquered by the 

 Romans, is a difficulty in the way of the theory of its 

 introduction by them. Though there can be no doubt 

 that the cultivated varieties all have a common 

 origin, it seems highly probable that this primitive 

 stock diverged into several distinct races whilst still 

 uncultivated, and that their cultivation throughout 

 Europe, from Ireland to the Caucasus, may date from 

 a time anterior to the Roman Empire. 



It is found apparently as an article of food in 

 the Swiss lake-dwellings, and is mentioned, under the 

 names " Akras," " Onkne," and " Apios," in the oldest 

 Greek writers as common to Egypt, Syria, and Greece. 

 The absence of any Sanskrit name for the tree, and 

 the lack of similarity of those in use by Chinese, 

 Persians, Arabs, and the Slavonic nations of Europe to 

 those of the West, are most simply explicable on the 

 theory of a primitive limitation of its range. The 

 Latin Pyrus, the French Poire, the English Pear, 

 and even the German Bim, can all be affiliated with 

 the Keltic Peren. The late Professor Karl Koch 



