no 
WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND TREES. 
in request in France for all purposes where strength and 
durability are needed. He further says that it takes two 
centuries to attain its full stature (fifty to sixty feet), “ and lives 
to so great an age that some specimens of it are believed 
to be upwards of looo years old.” 
We have already made reference to the meaning of the 
name Service. Another name — Sorb (from Latin sorbeo ) — 
shows closer affinity for the fermented liquor indicated by 
Servise, for it means “ drink down.” A third name is Chequer- 
tree, which Dr. Prior tells us is an antique pronunciation of 
the word choker, in allusion to the unpalatable fruit, fit to 
choke one. Choke-pear, it will be remembered, is a synonym 
of the Wild Pear. Britten and Holland regard the name 
Chequer-tree as having no connection with choking, but an 
indication of the chequered or spotted appearance of the fruit. 
The Medlar {Pyrus germanicd) is a small tree, native of 
Persia, Asia Minor, and Greece, and which is generally held to 
occur wild in England and the Channel Islands only as an 
escape from cultivation. The theory is that the tree was 
introduced at some date prior to 1596 — when we have record of 
its being in cultivation here — and that the Medlar-trees growing 
in the hedges of south and middle England are from seeds of 
these cultivated trees, which hav^e been sown by birds, or more 
probably mammals who have eaten the fruit. The fact that it 
is not found in woods is taken as evidence that it is non- 
indigenous. Such evidence is not the most convincing, but it 
is the best available. It should be noted, however, that the 
agents credited with its distribution along our hedgerows have 
free access to woods, and that if these places were favourable 
to the growth of the Medlar, we should probably find it there, 
whether indigenous or exotic. Much more conclusive, we think, 
is its restricted distribution abroad, as already indicated. One 
would not expect to find a tree whose nearest home is Greece, 
