212 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



It is fairly certain that the hawthorns, medlars, and 

 a few other allied groups are all descended from a 

 common ancestor with the pears and apples, and that 

 this ancestor branched off from the main line of rose 

 development at a very early period. All of them still 

 retain the primitive number of five fruit-cells, which has 

 been wholly lost in many allied types. But while the 

 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 neighbours. The 

 so-called wild service-tree (a complete misnomer, for the 

 cultivated service is derived, not from this but from the 

 mountain ash) still pretty accurately represents for us 

 the original 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 England, except in the southern counties, where 

 it grows sparingly in hangers and copses. Its small 

 brown globular berries are apples in a very miniature 

 form indeed. They are still occasionally sold in country 

 markets ; and they form a favourite 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 



