130 FAMILIAR TREES 
one can with difficulty persuade oneself that all three 
of the varieties of Wild Pear recognised by our 
botanists, with fruits seldom two inches long, and so 
harsh in flavour as to be as unpalatable as a Crab- 
apple, are merely the results of rapid degeneration. 
Nor is there any @ prtord reason against the native 
character of the Pear. It is in its distribution con 
fined to a limited area in Europe, not occurring south 
of the Balkans, nor in the northern parts of Russia, 
Sweden. and Norway. This agrees with its absence from 
the North of Scotland; whilst its presence in a wild 
state in Ireland, which was never conquered by the 
Romans, is a difficulty in the way of the theory of its 
introduction by them. Though there can be no doubt 
that the cultivated varieties all have a common 
origin, it seems highly probable that this primitive 
stock diverged into several distinct races whilst still 
uncultivated, and that their cultivation throughout 
Europe, from Ireland to the Caucasus, may date from 
a time anterior to the Roman Empire. 
It is found—apparently as an article of food—in 
the Swiss lake-dwellings, and is mentioned, under the 
names “ Akras,” “Onkne,” and “ Apios,” in the oldest 
Greek writers as common to Egypt, Syria, and Greece. 
The absence of any Sanskrit name for the tree, and 
the lack of similarity of those in use by Chinese, 
Persians, Arabs, and the Slavonic nations of Europe to 
those of the West, are most simply explicable on the 
theory of a primitive limitation of its range. The 
Latin Pyrus, the French Poire, the English Pear, 
and even the German Birn, can all be affiliated with 
the Keltic Peren. The late Professor Karl Koch 
