410 OUR WOODLAND TREES. 
. actually natives of our island, they have been so 
long naturalized here that*they would have pecu- 
liar claims upon the regard of English people, 
even were they not so valuable as they are as an 
article of food. 
Though the present species has given origin to 
a large number of cultivated varieties since its 
original introduction, it is not with the garden 
Cherry that we have to do in this place, but with 
the bitter-fruited Cherry of the woods. The wild 
Cherry is not ordinarily a large Tree, although it 
often attains a height of upwards of fifty feet, 
and not unfrequently has been known to reach, 
where the situation and conditions of growth 
have been very favourable, a height of as much as 
seventy oreightyfeet. Its clusters of five-petalled 
flowers, which generally appear before the leaves, 
are white. The leaves are somewhat large, 
drooping in habit, oval in shape, sharply pointed 
at their apices, with serrated margins. On their 
under-sides is scattered, more particularly near 
the mid-veins, a small quantity of light, hairy 
down. At or near the apex of the leaf-stalk will 
be found, on examination, two small reddish- 
