250 ENGLISH BOTANY. 



It. is thoii!;1it that the true rending should be "A rovm tree witch," the accepted version 

 being a corrn|)tion. Bishop Heber mentions in his Journal that in India he found a 

 tree veiy similar in form and shape to the Mountain-ash, regarded with the same super- 

 stitious reverence, and used as a preseivativc against niagic. 



The Mountain-ash is the tree for exposed and ojien situations ; it loves free air 

 and plenty of water ; and few trees suffer so mvich from drought and heat, and but few 

 do so well in plantations intended to resist a sharp wind or the sea breeze. 



SPECIES IV.-PYRUS DOMESTICA. Stn. 

 Plate CCGCLXXXVII. 

 Sorbus dnmestica, Lhm. Sp. Plant, p. GS4. 



Leaves pinnate, with 7 to 9 pairs of oblong acutely-serrated 

 leaflets, and an odd terminal one, thinly flocculent-felted and grey 

 beneath when young, sub-glabrous when old. Flow^ers in a 

 corymbo-paniculate cyme. Calyx-segments applied to the petals 

 in flower, inflexed when in fruit. Styles 5, entirely woolly. Fruit 

 large, turbinate, dull red, speckled, 5-celled. 



In woods. The only instance of its occurrence in this country 

 is that of a single tree in Wire Forest, on the borders of "Wor- 

 cestershire, no doubt not truly native. It has also been reported 

 from Cornwall, but on old and unconfirmed authority. 



[England.] Tree. Early Summer. 



Very like the mountain-ash, but with the young leaves more 

 floccose-felted below, the serratures of the leaflets with the outer 

 edge straighter, the lateral branches of the inflorescence shorter, so 

 that it is rather a panicle than a corymb, tlie fruit resembling a 

 small pear, 1 inch long and always with 5 cells. 



Common Service-tree. 



French, Sorbier Domestique. German, Speierling, Spierapfel. 



Tlie common name of this tree comes, according to Dr. Prior, from the word eertvisia, 

 its fruit having in ancient times been used for making a fermented liquor — a kind ol 

 beer, — and he quotes "Virgil as his authority. Evelyn tells us, in his " Sylva," that 

 "ale and beer brewed with these berries, being ripe, is an incomparable drink." The 

 cerevisia of the ancients was made from malt, and took its name, we are told by Isidore of 

 Seville, from Ceres, Cereris. It is a tree of very slow growth, and, according to Kroker, 

 does not come into bearing before it is sixty years old. The fruit is extremely austere 

 when at all unripe, but when mellowed by frost and keeping, it becomes soft, brown, 

 and eatable, somewhat like a medlar, though to most people less agreeable. The wood 

 is very hard, and was held in repute for making mathematical rulers and excisemen's 

 gauge-sticks until foreign woods of other kinds superseded it 



