144 



THE HAWTHORN 



{CRAT^GUS OXYACANTHA). 



p. Q. KEEGAN, LL.D., 



Patterdale, JVestmorland. .. . 



Associated indissolubly with the merry month of May, this 

 shrub or small tree has gathered round it a cluster of human 

 associations with which the severe scientist does not scorn to 

 sympathise. The brilliant aspect of its countless blossoms, all 

 in a robe of whitest grain and of exquisite symmetry of form 

 burst into full expansion, catches the eye and arrests the 

 regards of the most earthy clodhopper or the most demure 

 of unsophisticated natives. The olfactory sense is regaled as 

 well by the delicious odour, and a cheerfulness as of a living 

 thing seems to beam expressively from amid the sombre canopy 

 of leaves — all eminently fitted to evoke in the human onlooker 

 a corresponding cheerfulness all its ow^n. It may, therefore, be 

 permissible to present a brief chemical and physiological account 

 of this popular organism, commencing with the 



Stem. — The wood is hard and heavy (specific gravity 076), 

 white or slightly reddish, very homogeneous, but without 

 regularly circular growth or clear distinction between alburnum 

 and duramen, though sometimes marked with brown or reddish 

 spots in the central parts. The medullary rays are mostly in 

 two rows, the cells thereof being about i5'4 (micromillimetres) 

 high and 13 /x broad, their number in a millimetre of arc being 

 about 14 ; the vessels are very fine, being only 40 ft wide, are 

 isolated and very numerous, but decrease in number and size 

 towards the autumn portion of the annual ring which ends in 

 a narrow zone free therefrom, their walls have no tertiar)^ 

 thickening-layer ; the fibres are very close-set, have stoutly 

 thickened walls and are intermixed with very small parenchyma- 

 cells. In the bark the parenchyma consists of large thin-walled 

 cells mingled with small sieve-tubes filled with a thin watery 

 liquid, whereas the fibres are collected in long Isolated bandies 

 disposed in zones alternating with the soft bast and copiously 

 attended by cells containing large, clearly defined crystals of 

 oxalate of calcium ; the medullary rays (in two or three rows) 

 pass unchanged from the wood into the bast, but there assume 

 a curved contour ; the superficial periderm formed in the first 

 year of growth still persists up till about the thirteenth year. 



Naturalist, 



