THE. MEDLAR 6) 
be admitted that the tree is wild in Asia Minor and 
Persia, if not also in Greece on the one side and in 
China on the other. 
Such high authorities as Nyman and Sir Joseph 
Hooker doubt its being truly wild elsewhere; and 
Pliny, it must-be admitted, says that the Medlar was 
unknown in Italy in Cato’s time. He is, however, 
undoubtedly speaking of the cultivated fruit-tree. 
Fée considers the Medlar native in northern central 
Europe, and French botanists generally express no 
doubt as to its being truly wild in their own land. 
We have ourselves repeatedly found it in a very 
spinous, small-leaved, bushy form in dense thickets 
and extremely wild-seeming woods in Normandy, 
The late Professor Babington, in 1839, writes of it as 
“truly wild ” in Jersey, where it still exists. 
That the tree has been known, probably in a 
cultivated form, in northern Europe, from the earliest 
times of civilisation in that area, is clear from the 
changes which its name has gone through from the 
original Latin. Whilst the Italian Mespoli and the 
Dutch Mespelboom indicate the minimum of change, 
the German has become Mispel, Mespel, and Nespel- 
baum, the Spanish Nispero, and the French has been 
modified from Mesplier and Meflier to Néflier. As the 
English name Medlar does not seem even to occur 
as early as the time of Chaucer, it would seem to be 
rather of old French than of German origin, and may 
indicate the Norman introduction of the cultivated 
tree. William Turner just enumerates “ Mespilus, a 
Medlor tre,” in his “ Libellus de re herbaria,” in 1538 ; 
but is more precise in his “Names of Herbes,” ten 
