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Anderson. In every wood near Keswick, and in Ennersdale. Mr. Winch. Arniston woods, near Edinburgh. Dr. Greville. But no where with more pleasing effect than in the romantic Dovedale, does

"The light Bird Cherry hangs its flag,

In snowy splendour from the crag." E.)

T. May.

P. CER'ASUS. Umbels mostly on short fruit-stalks: leaves egg-spearshaped, smooth, plicate: (slightly downy beneath. E.)

(E. Bot. 706. E.)-Sheldr. 54. 1 and 6—Hunt. Evel. 188. 1. p. 181. Ed. ii.
-Blackw. 449-Matth. 233 and 235-Dod. 808. 1-Ger. 1502. 1-Ger.
1319. 1-Fuchs. 425-J. B. i. a. 220-Trag. 1026-Lonic. i. 13. 2.
(A moderate sized tree with smooth, greyish, horizontally splitting bark. E.)
Leaf-scales toothed. Floral-leaves three-cleft, serrated; the intermediate
one leafy. The terminal buds producing leaves, the lateral ones flowers,
which are from the last year's shoots. Blossoms white. Fruit red. Linn.
(Leaves on leaf-stalks, sharp-pointed, unequally serrated, veined; the
younger ones more or less pubescent. Calyx reflexed. Nut hard, smooth.
Fl. Brit. E.)

WILD CHERRY-TREE. (GREEN TREE, in Scotland. Irish: Cran silin.
Welsh: Ceriosen. S. W. Sirianen. N. W. E.) Woods and hedges not
uncommon. (In Hertfordshire growing to a large size. Mr. Woodward.
Many fine trees of this sort grow at Whixley, near Wetherby. Dr.
Hunter. E.)
T. May.t

The Bird Cherry grows well in woods, groves, or fields, but not in a moist soil. It bears lopping and suffers the grass to grow under it. The fruit is nauseous: but bruised, and infused in wine or brandy, it imparts an agreeable flavour. (Dr. Clarke says, the Swedes flavour their distilled spirits with the blossoms. E.) A strong decoction of the bark is used by the Finlanders to cure syphilitic complaints; which practice is corroborated by the testimony of M. Broerland in the Stockh. Tr. He directs six ounces of the dry, or eight of the fresh back, to be boiled in eight to four pints of water. The dose is four ounces, four times a day. -It alone cures the slighter infections, and combined with Mercury facilitates the cure of the severer states of the disease. Venel. A decoction of the berries is sometimes given with saccess in dysentery. The wood being smooth and tough is made into handles for knives, and whips, (and is used in cabinet work. The twigs are tough and pliant, and serviceable for withs. E., Sheep, goats, and swine eat it. Cows are not fond of it. Horses refuse it. (Erineum Padi, Grev. Scot. Crypt. 157. 1; "in distinct roundish patches, whitish when young, changing to orange and deep brown," may be observed on the leaves. E.)

(In France the Wild Cherry-tree is admitted as an ornament to avenues and parks; but, though it will attain to considerable height, and is attractive when in full blossom, it can be deemed little more than the beauty of a day. The double-blossomed, (of which dwarfs may be procured), and the red-flowering varieties, have strong claims to admittance into the shrubbery; especially the former, whose multiplicate and snow-white petals, displayed on long, slender footstalks, obtain universal admiration. E.) The Cherry-tree loves a sandy soil, and an elevated situation. The gum that exudes from this tree is equal to gum arabic, (obtained from certain species of Acacia) though differing in chemical qualities. E.) Hasselquist relates, that more than one hundred men, during a siege, were kept alive for nearly two months, without any other sustenance than a little of this gun taken into the mouth sometimes, and suffered gradually to dissolve. (To produce an effect so surprising, we must suppose it to operate in a two-fold manner,—both by lubricating the coats of the stomach and obtunding the inordinate action of the gastric fluid, as also, though perhaps in a secondary degree, by its nutritive quality; in which it would appear even to approach animal gluten, which yields so extraordinary a degree of support in the form of portable soup, or cavalry balls, and experienced in the late campaigns. (It is remarkable that the barks of all the trees which furnish this bland mucilaginous substance are highly astringent; that of the Acacia itself is used in India for tanning; and in our country the Cherry and Plum trees, which also yield gum, have astringent barks." Edin. Dispens. The fruit,

(Var. 2. Fructu nigro. Fruit black. The hairiness on the under surface of the leaf proves too variable to constitute a specific distinction. E.) Ludw. 108-Blackw. 425—Sheldr. 54. 5-Ger. 1323. 11.

BLACK CHERRY. MAZZARDS. CARRONS, CARONE, or CROWN, in Hertfordshire, when cultivated. In some southern counties, Wild Cherries are likewise called Merries, from the French Merise. Welsh: Ceriosen, Sirianen ddû. P. avium. Linn. With., &c. P. Cerasus d. Sm. P. nigra. Ehrh. Cerasus sylvestris, fructu nigro. Ray. C. nigra. Ger. Em. E.) P. DOMESTICA. Fruit-stalks mostly solitary: leaves spear-egg-shaped, convolute when young: branches thornless.

(E. Bot. 1783. E.)-Woodv. 85-Park. 1512. 1—Ger. 1311. 1-Matth. 265 -Lonic. i. 52. 1-Fuchs. 403-Trag. 1019-Dod. 805-Lob. Obs. 595. 2 -Ger. Em. 1497. 1.

(A moderate-sized tree. E.) Leaves, when expanding from the bud, coiled. Flowering-buds producing no leaves. Linn. Calyx sometimes six-cleft. Style crooked. (Leaves on short foot-stalks, serrated, smooth, the younger ones pubescent beneath. Petals white, inversely egg-shaped. Fruit large, black, with a fine bloom, elliptical. Fl. Brit. E.) WILD PLUM-TREE. (Welsh: Eirinen; Eirin-bren. P. communis domestica. Huds. P. gallica; (the fruit.) Pharm. Lond. Hedges, and similar situations, though perhaps rarely found in a perfectly native state. E.) T. April.

(though inferior), may be eaten either fresh or dried; and it is frequently infused in brandy for the sake of its flavour. The wood is hard and tough. It is used by the turner, and is formed into chairs and hoops, and stained to imitate mahogany, (to which valuable wood, both in grain and colour, it opproaches nearer than any other of this country. E.) This tree is the original stock from which the cultivated kinds are derived, (which, however agreeable to the palate, if taken in large quantities, are apt to prove indigestible. The finer sorts were first introduced into Kent from Flanders, temp. Hen. VIII.-Mr. Erinkley observes" the eatable part of the cherry, (or other stone fruit), first serves the purposes of perfecting the seed or kernel, by means of vessels passing through the stone. After the kernel is perfected, the stone becomes hard, and the vessels cease their functions. But the substance surrounding the stone is not then thrown away as useless. That which was before only an instrument for perfecting the kernel, now receives and retains to itself the whole of the sun's influence, and thereby becomes a grateful food to man. Also what an evident mark of design is the stone protecting the kernel. The intervention of the stone prevents the second use from interfering with the first." And since we cannot but admit with the judicious Paley, that " arrangement, disposition of parts, subserviency of means to an end, relation of instruments to a use, imply the presence of intelligence and mind;" as an occupation worthy of the utmost attention of rational, though finite beings,

"Each secret spring, each organ let us trace,

That nicck the proudest art of human race."

A parasitic fungus of doubtful genus, (according to Purton), having some affinity to Peziza, to Sphæria, and to Clavaria, (Peziza Cerasi, of Persoon), is found very common on the dead branches of the wild Cherry tree. "At first it is externally black-afterwards bursting, exhibits a paler colour beneath." Livia Cerasi may be detected on this tree. E.)

The Wild Pluni-tree lores a lofty exposure, and is less injurious to pasturage than many other trees. The varieties have probably originated from the red and white cultivated plum, either sown by design or accident. The garden plums are derived from this species, at first raised from the stones, but alterwards preserved by budding and grafting on any plum-stock. Cotton may be died of a rose colour by the juice of the wild fruit, combined with muriatic or sulphuric acid. E.) The bark dyes yellow. (Livia Pruni may be observed upon this tree. E.)

P. INSITITIA. Fruit-stalks in pairs: leaves egg-shaped, slightly pubescent beneath, convolute: branches ending in a spine.

E. Bot. 841.

Stipule cloven to the base. Calyx, its outer skin may be pulled off, adhering to the fruit-stalk, and appearing like an outer cap. Flowers white; larger than those of P. domestica. Style straight. (Fruit black, with a bluish bloom; sometimes the colour of bee-wax, or red. In our climate this tree does not attain the size of P. domestica. Berry roundish, austere. E.)

BULLACE TREE. (Irish: Droihean. Welsh: Eirinen Bulas. E.) Hedges. T. April.*

P. SPINO'SA.

Fruit-stalks solitary: leaves spear-shaped, smooth:

branches thorny.

Fl. Dan. 926—(E. Bot. 842. E.)-Sheldr. 73-Woodv. 84-Fuchs. 404Trag. 1016-J. B. i. a. 193-Lonic. i. 51-Blackw. 494-Matth. 266Dod. 753. 2-Lob. Obs. 595. 1-Ger. Em. 1497. 5-Park. 1033—Ger. 1313. 1. 2.

Styles sometimes two. St. (A bushy, rigid, spinous shrub, with darkcoloured bark; considerably smaller than the last; flowers white, more decidedly preceding the leaves, which are scarcely an inch long. Fruit a black, roundish, austere berry. E.)

BLACK-THORN. SLOE-TREE. (Irish: Airn. Welsh: Draenen ddû; Eirin-berth. Gaelic: An-droighionn, preas-nan-airneag. P. sylvestris, the fruit; Pharm. Lond. E.) Hedges. S. March-April.†

* The fruit is acid, but so tempered by a sweetness and roughness as not to be unpleasant, particularly after having been mellowed by frosts. A conserve is prepared by mixing the pulp with thrice its weight of sugar. The bark of the 100ts and branches is considerably styptic. An infusion of the flowers, sweetened with sugar, is an aperient, not improper for children.

+ This species is not well adapted to grow in hedges, because it spread's its roots wide, and encroaches upon the pasturage; but it makes a good dead fence. The wood is hard and tough, and is formed into teeth for rakes, and walking sticks. From some effects which I have repeatedly observed to follow the prick of the thorns, I have reason to believe there is something poisonous in them, particularly in autumn. The tender leaves dried afford the best substitute for tea that has yet been tried. The fruit,

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bruised and put into wine gires it a beautiful red colour, and a pleasant subacid roughness. (It is believed to be a common ingredient in (British) Port-wine. E.) An infusion of a handful of the flowers is a safe cathartic. The bark powdered, in doses of two drams, will cure some agues. Letters written upon linen or woollen with the juice of the fruit will not wash out. Sheep, goats, and horses eat the leaves. The different species of Prunus furnish nourishment to the Papilio Crategi, Polychloris, and Betule; Phalana quercifalia, quercus, lanestris, cærulocephala, paronia, neustria, Oxyacanthæ, Citraga, prunaria, and brumata; Aphis padi; Curculio Cerasi, and Pruni; and Scarabus horticola.-Pnccinea Pruni will frequently be found scattered in minute yellow spots, on the under side of the leaves, especially during autunın : Xyloma rubrum, “roundish, red, changing to dark brown," Grev. Scot. Crypt. 120: Purt. t. 33. pervades the substance to both sides: and Sphæria Prunastri," ventricose, mouths spinulose, bursting through the bark, four-sided;" may be observed on the decaying branches about the month of April. Unless to the observant eye of the naturalist, ever alive to each indication of returning Spring, conspicu-

DIGYNIA.

CRATE GUS. Cal. five-cleft: Petals five: Berry beneath, (only dimpled, E.) one-celled, two-seeded.

C. OXYACAN'THA. (Thorny leaves smooth, mostly three-cleft: segments blunt, serrated: flowers corymbose. E.)

Jacq. Austr. 292. 2-(E. Bot. 2504. E.)-Matth. 163-Blackw. 149. 2J. B. i. b. 49-Fl. Dan. 634.

(A small bushy tree, with smooth bark and hard wood. E.) All the varieties are found in our hedge rows; that with one pistil is the most common; that with three the most rare. (Branches smooth, stiff, spinous. E.) Flowers white, but in clayey soils pinky red, (highly fragrant. E.) Berries mostly a coral red, but sometimes yellow, or white. Leaves glossy, the segments more or less blunt or acute, serrated upwards, but entire at the base; the middle segment three-cleft. Capsules mostly singleseeded, but sometimes there is a second cell, and the rudiment of a second seed.

Var. 2. Monogyna. Flowers with one pistil; leaves, segments more acute and expanding.

Jacq. Austr. 292. 1—(Fl. Dan. 1162. E.)-Sheldr. 21—Barr. 563—Clus. i. 121-Lob. Obs. 614. 2-Park. 1025-Walc.-Blackw. 149. 1-Trag. 984 -Ger. 1146. 1-Dod. 751. 1-Ger. Em. 1327. 1.

Var. 3. Trigyna. Flowers with three pistils.

Hunt.-Evel. 398. ii. p. 92. Ed. 2d.

Var. 4. (Glastonburiensis. E.) Glastonbury Thorn. Appendages at the base of the leaves kidney-shaped, toothed, very large.

In a lane beyond the church-yard on the opposite side of the street near a pit grows a very old tree. A woman ninety years of age never remembers it otherwise than as it now appears. Another tree of the same kind may be seen two or three miles from Glastonbury. It has been reported to have no thorns, but that I found to be a mistake; it has thorns, like other Hawthorns, but which likewise on aged trees are but few. There is also a full sized tree of this kind in the garden at Piper's Inn. This variety blossoms twice a year; the winter blossoms, which are about the size of a sixpence, appear about Christmas, (it may

ous as may be this primaveral ensign amidst leafless and dark associates, it attracts but little notice. Mr. Howitt has however described its peculiarities in verse :

"The April air is shrewd and keen,

No leaf bas dared unfold,

Yet thy white blossom's radiant sheen,
Spring's banner, I behold.

Though all beside be dead and drear,
Undauntedly thy flowers appear."

Nor does even this ordinary and neglected little tree fail to yield its moral to the reflecting mind; the caduceous character of the petals, which fall in showers with the slightest agitation, offering a fit emblem of that premature decay, so often observable in

"Youth-the vision of a morn,

That flies the coming day:

It is the blossom of the Thorn

Which rude winds sweep away." Cunningham. E.)

occasionally happen on the precise day, as recorded in the legend, E.) but sometimes sooner. These produce no fruit. The berries contain only one seed, and there seemed only to have been one pistil, but it was late in the season when I examined it, (Oct. 1792). I was informed that the berries when sown produce plants nowise differing from the common Hawthorn. Probably the tree which gave birth to the tradition (of its having sprung originally from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, who; with his missionary companions, resolving there to found the first Christian church in this land, stuck it into the ground, when it quickly put forth branches and blossoms. E.) grew within the walls of the abbey, and may have died from age, or been destroyed at the time of the Reformation.*

WHITE-THORN. HAW-THORN. MAY. (QUICK, or QUICK-SET. Welsh: Draenen-wen; Yspyddaden. Gaelic: Ansgitheach. C. Oxyacantha. Linn. and most authors. Mespilus Oxyacantha. Gært. Sm. E.) Hedges, woods, and old parks. (With white berries, near Bampton, Oxfordshire. E.) T. May-June.†

(However that may have been, the existence of this insus naturæ, (to which some few other instances approximate, vid. Quercus), is unquestionable, and proved to be something more than what Dr. Hunter apprehended, "a sanctified deceit, sunk into discredit even with the meanest of the vulgar." Sylv. i. 178. We therefore, in addition to the particulars given by our author of this extraordinary, though not miraculous thorn, nearly forty years ago, insert a few selected from the "History of the Abbey of Glaston," 4to. 1826, by the Rev. R. Warner, F. A. S. who has ably illustrated the interesting remains of that superb monastic establishment,

"Where pendent ivy ill supplies

With perishable gloom

Those rays that, rich in varying dyes,

Gleam'd o'er a martyr's tomb."

"Since Dr. Withering's time," observes Mr. Warner, "the Holy Thorn has been introduced into many parts; and is now found in various gardens of Glastonbury and its vicinity. Pilgrimages continued to be made to this wonderful tree, even in Mr. Eyston's time;" (ob. 1721). "and its scions were sought for with the greatest avidity, both by the pious of the Romish Church, and the superstitious of other systems of faith, till within these eighty years."-London Evening Post, Jan. 1753: “A vast concourse of people attended the noted thorn on Christmas-day, new style; but, to their great disappointment, there was no appearance of its blowing, which made them watch it narrowly ill the fifth of January, the Christmas-day, old style, when it blowed as usual." Strype records one of Hen. VIII.'s" Visiters" having at the spoliation of the Abbey, sent up with various relicks, (in 1536), "First, two flowers, wrapped in white and black sarcenet, that on Christenmass even, horú ipsú quá Christus natus fuerat, will spring, and burgen, and bare blossomes." A later authority states, in a word, the blossoms of this tree were such curiosities beyond seas, that the Bristol merchants carried them into foreign parts."-According to some writers the spot on which St. Joseph originally planted his staff, and where the wonderful thorn stood, and successors of the same peculiar kind were for centuries, by grafts or buds, preserved, until the political commotions in the reign of Charles I, when the tree, being considered a relic of Papistry, was nearly destroyed by a puritan soldier (who lost his own life by a splinter in the impious attempt), was on the south ridge of Weary-all-Hill, at present called Werrall Park. About the year 1740, the stump or root was to be seen, but nothing now (Avalonian Guide, 1818), remains, except grafts from it growing in differ ent places the oldest of them stands near St. John's Church-yard at Glastonbury, and is a large tree which continues to blossom twice a year." E.)

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+ Ou account of the stiffness of its branches, the sharpness of its thorns, its roots not spreading wide, and its capability of bearing the severest winters without injury, Hawthorn is universally preferred for making hedges, whether to clip or to grow at large. (The bark, with copperas, is used by the Highlanders to dye black; and without, yellow. IB

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