252 ENGLISH BOTANY. 



bescent beneath on the veins and margins, but at length glabrous 

 and shining, very finely serrate, with the serratures commonly 

 blunt. Flowers rather few, entirely white, 1 to IJ inch across. 

 Upper part of pedicels, calyx-tube, and segments woolly. Fruit 

 tapering towards tlie base, 1 to 2 inches long. 



Sub-Species II.— PyrUS AchraS. •• Gart."{1), Boreau. 

 Plate CCCCLXXXVIII. (separate flower and fruit). 

 Boremi, Fl. du Centre de la Fr. ed. iii. Vol. II. p. 235. 



Branches more or less spiny. Leaves oval or roundish-oval, 

 acute or abruptly acuminated, greyish flocculent when young, on 

 both sides, and remaining slightly jiubescent beneath when mature. 

 Styles about as long as the stamens. Fruit globular-pyriform, 

 rounded at the base. 



In woods, thickets, and hedges. Apparently much more rare 

 than P. Pyraster. The unijublished figure among the drawings 

 for English botany in the British Museum is from an Essex 

 specimen, but it is not unlikely to have been overlooked in other 

 places. P. Pyraster also occurs in Essex, from whence it has been 

 sent me by Mr. Varenne. 



England. Tree. Late Spring. 



This has the leaves more downy than P. Pyraster and never 

 becoming completely glabrous beneath. The pedicels and calyx- 

 tube are more woolly, and the fruit sub-globular, about 1 inch long. 



Wallroth reverses the names Pyraster and Achras, as applied to 

 the two forms of wild pears by Professor Boreau. 



Wild Pear. 



Freiicli, Poirier Commun. German, Gemeiner Birnhaum. 



The fruit of the Pear in a wild state is scarcely eatable, being very harsh and acrid, 

 and very small. The trees attain a very great age. JNI. Bose says that he has seen 

 trees that wei-e considered to be four hundred years old ; and Mr. Knight observes : 

 " The )ieriiHl at which the Teinton squash pear first sprang from seed cannot now be 

 at all ascertained, but I suspect that it existed as early as the sixteenth ct-ntury, and 

 the identical trees which supplied the inhabitants of Herefordshire in the seventeenth 

 century with liquor are likely to do the same good to those of the niueteenth. The Pear 

 is mentioned by the earliest writers as common in Syria, Egypt, and Greece, from which 

 country it appears to have been brought into Italy. Theophrastus speaks of the \n-o- 

 ductiveness of some old Pear-tiees, and Virgil mentions some Pears he received from 

 Cato. The earliest notice of the Pear-tree extant is probably that of Homer, who, in 

 the descrijition he gives of the meeting between Laertes and Ulysses, mentions it as 

 one of the trees growing in the garden of the old king. The Romans cultivated thirty- 

 six sorts. Possibly they intnnluced it into our island, and our Pear-trees may only be 



