The Service-berries 



the little tree quite loses its identity when the forest wakes and 

 covers itself with a dense thatch of green. Cloistered thus, and 

 cut off from the benefits of wind and sun, no wonder that the tree 

 ordinarily rises little higher than a thrifty shrub. 



The Dwarf June-berry, or Swamp Sugar Pear (A. obo- 

 valis, Ashe), has its young leaves and tender shoots covered with 

 dense white wool until quite matured. The flowers are smaller 

 than those of its sister species, and crowded in shorter, denser 

 racemes. The fruit is juicier and of richer flavour, and eagerly 

 sought by children and birds, Tfte tree bears the name, long-leaf 

 service-tree in some localities, and in others, shad-bush. The 

 Indians noted that these trees blossomed along the banks of tide- 

 water streams about the time that the shad came up to spawn. 

 The colonists adopted this name. Naturally, it is not used in the 

 inland states, where shad are seen only in fish markets. This 

 June-berry frequents swamps and stream borders, ranging from 

 New Brunswick to Florida and Louisiana, and west to Minnesota 

 and Missouri. 



The Western Service-berry {A. alnifolia, Nutt.) has a 

 thick, roundish leaf, broad and toothed, which makes it a hand- 

 some foliage tree. Its large, juicy, fine-flavoured berry commends 

 it to horticulturists as worthy of cultivation. It grows over a 

 vast territory which extends from the Yukon River south through 

 the Western States, and east to Ontario, Michigan and Nebraska, 



Widely distinct as is this species from A. Canadensis when 

 individuals from distant localities are compared, these differences 

 become less marked as each species is studied nearer and nearer 

 the regions where their ranges overlap. It is believed that in 

 these two we have the offspring of a single species which came 

 from the North, and, spreading east and west on the slopes of the 

 Rocky Mountains, became modified by climate into two distinct 

 species as we see them to-day. Comparisons of specimens taken 

 at regular intervals on both sides of the mountains form a most 

 interesting chain of evidence to support the theory of a common 

 origin. Fossils of the Glacial Period show clearly the charac- 

 teristics of the ancestral type. 



298 



