260 
28. POVIACEiE. 
uniformly 4. Teeth of cal. indexed in fr. Ov. mostly 3-celled. 
Fr. (wrongly called “berries”) bright scarlet or orange-red, 
apple-shaped i. e. globose and level or flattish at top, the size of 
large peas or about f in. in diam., in corymbose erect panicles 
shorter than the 1., with a nauseous slightly bitter taste, mostly 
only 1-seeded. Seed small compressed brown. 
Almost precisely the genuine Mountain Ash of England, Wales, 
and Scotland, with exception only of the shorter pan. more im- 
bedded or embosomed in the 1., and perfectly erect, not drooping 
or weighing down the branches, both in fl. and fr., — characters 
which are however quite in conformity with the smaller or 
shorter 1. and more thickly-leafy dwarfish stunted shrubby 
habit of the whole pi. The fl. are also really fragrant, not dis- 
agreeably strong and sickly-scented as in the English pi. 
Though growing apparently quite wild, and far away from 
and above all trace or range of cultivation, the apparent con- 
finement of this pi. to two spots only in Mad. far apart and 
much resorted to by sportsmen (who in former years, being often 
Scotch, might possibly have introduced so national a pi. into 
these two localities, their favourite haunts in search of game) 
throws some uncertainty on the propriety of regarding it as a 
truly indigenous sp. And the suspicion is sustained, not only 
by the fact of its non-discovery in the Canaries or A^res, but 
by the entire ignorance of the country-people in Mad. of its 
existence in the island, and by their want of any common name 
for so (to them) remarkable a tree. Moreover, if it really were 
a native pi., or even one of more than comparatively recent 
introduction, its apparent restriction to two remote confined 
localities would seem more strange, considering the abundance 
of Blackbirds ( Turdus Merida L.) in such districts, and the 
greediness with which in England they devour the fr. and so 
disseminate the pi. 
All this however is pure conjecture or suspicion only : and 
on the other hand, besides its exhibiting very appreciable 
varietal differences from the Scotch or English pi., there stand 
the two significant facts — that it does not occur anywhere in 
gardens or as otherwise cult, in Mad., and that the closely 
allied Pi/rus Aria (L.) Ehrh. or Sm. has been discovered by 
Webb in Tenerife under very similar circumstances, viz. 
growing “almost onjy in two spots very remote from each 
other” (WB. Hist. iii. i. p. 22). 
Nothing either way can be inferred from the fact of its having 
