THE WHITE BEAM. 



Py'rus A'ria Ebrh. 



As we travel by rail in the month of May through a 

 land of rolling chalk downs, or beneath the regular 

 cliff-like line of some limestone escarpment, a momen- 

 tary glance may almost deceive us with the impres- 

 sion of a lingering snow-wreath, or at least of a 

 mass of Blackthorn. Delicate greenery may be 

 already waving above the grey boles of the Beeches 

 that crown the summit, and this snoWy whiteness 

 appears too high up against the tree-Stems in the 

 background to be resting on the ground. A clearer 

 glance shows it to be lifted up in long and 

 broad sprays waving in the breeze above a hedge- 

 row, or in the midst of a copse, in a manner 

 which does not suggest the short rigid branches of 

 the Blackthorn. The wind has turned towards us the 

 characteristic white under-surfaces of the leaves of 

 the White Beam (Pyrus Aria Ehrh.). This shrub — 

 for it is rarely that we find it of larger growth — is 

 now in flower ; but the loose clusters of its blossoms 

 are hardly whiter than the downy under-sides of 

 its foliage. Thus P. Aria comes, to bear the old 

 English name White Beam — the white tree.par excel- 

 lence, a' name including; as also does that of the 

 Hornbeam, our old derivative from the German hawm, 

 a tree ; so that it would be a mere pleonasm to call it 

 the White Beam tree. 



