214 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



anything like a patch of brilliant colour. If you cut 

 them across the middle, however, you will see that they 

 remain generically apples in structure and architecture : 

 while their cultivated form, the service fruit of the 

 Continent, still bears witness to their common origin by 

 actually assuming the shape of a little brownish pear. 

 From the same central junction, on the other hand, the 

 true pears and apples diverged in another direction, 

 spreading rather southward and eastward, and attaining 

 a tree-like stature, with foliage and fruits better adapted 

 to a lowland existence. Their leaves gradually lost the 

 deep lobes of the wild service-tree, and became regular 

 ovals in shape, marked at the edges by a number of 

 small fine teeth only, as befits denizens of the sheltered 

 dells, with free elbow-room for catching the full flood of 

 the air and the sunlight. At the same time, their flowers 

 grew fewer and their fruits larger, as almost always 

 happens with more southerly species of northern types. 

 Still later, the true pear and the true apple parted 

 company with one another, and with their near allies the 

 Siberian crab and the pyrus japonica. Their real differ- 

 ences are after all very slight : if it were not for the 

 marked flavour of the fruit probably no one would ever 

 think of reckoning them as distinct species. 



