202 COLIK CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



hawthorns and some of their congeners have gone on to 

 acquire hard, bony, nut-like coverings to their seeds, the 

 cell-walls of the pear and apple group remain simply 

 thin and cartilaginous, making what we call a core ; so 

 that the whole fruit can be readily cut across with a knife 

 a peculiarity which at once distinguishes this minor 

 tribe from all its stony-celled neighbors. The so-called 

 wild service-tree (a complete misnomer, for the cultivat- 

 ed service is derived, not from this but from the moun- 

 tain ash) still pretty accurately represents for us the orig- 

 inal stock from which the higher pears and apples are 

 derived. It is a tall shrub or small bush, common in 

 central and southern Europe, but not often seen in Eng- 

 land, except in the southern counties, where it grows 

 sparingly in hangers and copses. Its small brown globu- 

 lar berries are apples in a very miniature form indeed. 

 They are still occasionally sold in country markets ; and 

 they form a favorite food of small birds, by whom their 

 pips are widely dispersed. In the shape of its leaves, as 

 in other points, the wild service-tree may be regarded 

 as a sort of central junction, whence the other members 

 of the pear group have slowly diverged in different 

 directions. For while the true roses and most other 

 early members of the rose family have very compound 

 leaves, composed (as everybody knows) of several little 

 toothed leaflets, arranged opposite one another on either 

 side of a common leaf-stalk, the wild service-tree has 

 broad leaves, vandyked only half-way through into a 

 few pointed lobes ; and this type marks it out at once as 

 an intermediate stage between the very much divided 

 foliage of the true roses and the perfectly simple ellipti- 

 cal foliage of the pear and the apple. 



From such a central junction, then, or rather from 

 some ancestral form closely resembling it, the primitive 



