XXVIL 2 THE AMERICAN MOUNTAIN ASH. 439 
in 1836, the catalogue and the gardens of the London Horticul- 
tural Society, contained upwards of 1400 distinct sorts, (Low- 
don, p. 895,) and new ones are every year added. 
The fruit is not only delicious and wholesome to man, either 
unprepared, or in the numerous forms into which it is reduced 
by the culinary art, but it forms a very valuable and nutritious 
article of food to almost all quadrupeds. 
The wood of the apple tree is of a reddish or brownish color, 
smooth, fine-grained, and hard, but rather hght. it is much 
used by the turner, and often made into walking-sticks. It has 
been found very durable when used as cogs of wheels. On ac- 
count of its smoothness and hardness, it is used to make shuttles 
and reeds for weaving. 
The apple tree is often found growing in the forest, rising to 
a far greater height than when in the orchard. Stocks have 
been pointed out to me more than seventy feet high. 
In the southern country, a small native apple tree is found, 
the Pyrus corondria, growing rarely to the height of twenty 
feet, bearing large, fragrant, rose-colored flowers, succeeded by 
small fruit. In the Middle States occurs another, P. angusti- 
folia, with leaves and fruit smaller. 
Tus American Mountain Aso. P. Americana. De Candolle. 
The mountain ash is found growing abundantly about Wa- 
chusett, and in several other mountainous situations in Massa- 
chusetts, and also in low, cold, moist plains in Maine. It often 
grows in bunches. The trunk rarely erect, but ascending, and 
from fifteen to twenty-five feet high. Its branches are few, sol- 
itary, and making a sharp angle with the stem. ‘The bark is 
of a bright bottle green on the new shoots, growing darker on 
the older. The leaves are in tufts on the ends of the branches, 
pinnate, usually of seven pairs of leaflets and an cdd one. ‘The 
petiole is dark red. The leaflets are oblong-lanceoiate, unequal 
at base, rounded or cordate on the lewer, acute on the upper 
side, equally and deeply serrated, with numerous parallel nerves. 
The color is a soft green, paler beneath. The flowers, which 
expand early in June, are white; the fruit, which, like that of 
