HEDGE-ROWS OF THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF PLYMOUTH. 223 
however found the smell of its flowers to be so disagreeable that 
I cannot but think some would object to its introduction near their 
dwellings. Fruit is occasionally produced on the wild plant. 
Some that I examined a few years ago was nearly globose in 
shape; the largest examples a little over half-an-inch each way. 
When fully grown, but stone-hard, the colour was olivaceous 
brown, with numerous very small light-brown or greyish dots 
disposed irregularly over the surface, giving the skin a blistered 
appearance. When ripe, at the end of October or in November, 
it becomes somewhat reddish in colour, but is never of the decided 
red of the berries of the allied P. eu-Aria. Beyond ‘fruit red,” 
copied into Babington’s Manual, I can find no description of 
that of latifolia, apart from that of Aria, in any of our British 
Floras, hence a reason for the insertion of the preceding particulars. 
The use made of the fruit of an allied species, said to be Pyrus 
domestica, originated the English name of these plants. This was 
employed for making a fermented liquor, a kind of beer, called in 
Latin Cervisia, which word became corrupted into ‘ Service.” 
One of the best known species of the genus is the graceful and 
- elegant Mountain Ash (P. Aucuparia). Many who have never seen 
it overhanging the mountain stream, or mingling in the scanty 
coppice growth that here and there forms a slight fringe around 
the base of some Dartmoor hill, may have noticed its glowing 
berries as one of the chief ornaments of some villa entrance, or 
pretentious cottage residence, on the outskirts of our town, where 
its flexible young branches are sometimes interlaced to form a 
living archway above the garden gate. Pity it is thus to confine 
graceful boughs formed to wave with such elegance in the breeze. 
As a hedge-row bush it is local in our area, being rather common 
in the wilder and hilly tracts, but far from common in the flatter 
portions of the country, and the vicinity of the coast. The fruit 
is so greedily devoured by birds of the thrush kind, that it does 
not deck the bushes for any considerable time. One of our most 
characteristic Dartmoor birds, the Ring Ouzel (Turdus torquatus), 
helps to clear them before it leaves in the autumn. 
Having now spoken of all our hedge-row bushes coming under 
Pyrus, I will bring my little paper to an end. I may perhaps 
be able to say something at a future time on the rest of our hedge- 
row bushes, if I have not exhausted the patience of the members 
of our Society by the details now given. 
