WHITE BEAM. 
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State, though children punish their digestive organs with it. Pigs 
are partial to Crab-apples, a taste they have evidently inherited 
from the wild boar. A delicious preserve, called Crab-jelly, is 
made by stewing the whole fruit, then pressing the soft flesh 
through a hair sieve, and boiling the pulp with sugar. Cyder is 
made from the rotting Crabs ; also a kind of vinegar called 
verjuice, or vargis. 
The Wild Apple is found all over the United Kingdom as far 
north as the Clyde, and wherever it is known to occur it is worth 
a special visit in May, when all its crooked branches and 
straggling shoots are rendered beautiful by the abundance of 
delicately tinted and fragrant flowers. It is also far from being 
unattractive in the autumn, when the miniature apples hang 
from the boughs. 
White Beam {Py >rus aria). 
Owing to its very local occurrence, the White Beam, though 
widely distributed, is one of the less known of our trees and 
shrubs. It comes into both these categories according to the 
situation of its growth, for whilst in exposed mountainous 
localities a specimen of mature age may be no more than four 
or five feet high, and of bush-like growth, under the lee of a 
wood, and on a calcareous soil, it will be an erect and graceful 
tree of pyramidal form, whose apex is forty feet from the ground. 
In its early years growth is tolerably rapid, but at the age of 
ten it slackens pace, and after it has attained its majority its 
progress is very slow. Its wood is fine-grained, very hard, white, 
but inclining to yellow. The bark is smooth, and little subject 
to the cracks and fissures that mark the Apple-bark. The 
branches, except a few of the lowest, all have an upward 
tendency. 
The leaves var>’ considerably in the several forms or sub-species, 
but in the typical form they are a broad oval, with the edges 
o 
