Pyrus 1563 



in the north-western plain ; and elsewhere is seen in hedges, copses, and the edges 

 of the broad-leaved forests. In the Swiss Alps and the Jura, 1 it ascends to 2700 ft. 

 and in the Tyrol to 4800 ft. In France, it is found as a scattered tree in most of 

 the broad-leaved forests of the plains and low hills ; but is absent in the region of 

 the olive. In England, it occurs as a rare tree in woods, thickets, and hedgerows 

 from Yorkshire southwards, but it is a doubtful native, except in the form var. cordata. 

 P. communis has been found 2 in the fossil state in neolithic peat at Crossness, Essex, 

 determined from wood examined by the late Professor Marshall Ward. 



* (A. H.) 



Remarkable Trees 



It is not our intention to deal here with the cultivated varieties of pear, which 

 are very numerous ; and with regard to those used for making perry, we refer our 

 readers to the Herefordshire Pomona as the most comprehensive recent work on 

 the subject. 



The largest pear tree which I have ever seen or heard of stands alone on the 

 north side of a hill on Church Farm in the parish of Lassington, about two miles from 

 Gloucester, in a grass field of rather strong land on the Old Red Sandstone. Whether 

 it is, as I believe a wild pear, or not, it is on its own roots, and bears small fruit which 

 ripen earlier than any of the perry pears of the district. It is described in Witchell's 

 Fauna and Flora of Gloucestershire, 264 (1892), as being 18 feet in girth, but I 

 measured it, in January 1909, as 16^ ft. in girth and about 50 ft. high. The trunk is 

 about 15 ft. high, and, though hollow at the base, with a large limb broken off, seems 

 healthy, and the branches are full of young wood. By a rough estimate it must 

 contain at least 200 cubic feet in the trunk, and another 100 feet or more in the 

 larger limbs, and is the oldest-looking pear tree that I ever saw (Plate 356). 



Another very large pear tree grows at Hardwicke Court near Gloucester, and 

 measures 13^ ft. in girth at a foot from the ground, dividing above this point 

 into three main trunks. 



One of the most remarkable trees in Great Britain is the pear at Holme 

 Lacy Rectory. This is described in Littlebury's Herefordshire Gazetteer as having 

 been a very old tree in 1776, when it yielded 15 to 16 hogsheads of perry in one 

 year. At that time it covered half an acre of ground. It was described by a corre- 

 spondent of Loudon in 1836 as at this time much smaller, but still healthy and 

 vigorous. 3 Its peculiar feature is the way in which its branches after extending 

 laterally to a considerable distance, fall to the ground and take root, giving rise to a 

 new tree which again extends in the same way, so that it is a remarkable instance 

 of layering. It is now impossible to say where the original trunk first stood, as it 

 is divided into three parts, of which the principal trunk measures 59 ft. by 8 ft. 8 in., 

 and spreads a long way into a shrubbery ; another in the meadow outside the 



1 Lord Ducie has a thriving tree at Tortworth raised from seed sent from the Jura by Mr. G. H. Wollaston. 



2 Cf. C. Reid, Origin British Flora, 119 (1899). 



' Edwin Lees figures in Card. Chron. ix. 268, fig. 45 (1878), a part of this tree, which he said measured 80 feet from the 

 base of the principal fallen trunk to the end of the branches ; but I cannot recognise the part of the tree which he sketched. 



