A genus of three or four species, two of them European, and one, with very numerous and marked varieties, American.

THE SHAD BUSH. SWAMP PYRUS. A. Canadensis. Torrey and Gray.

Figured in Audubon's Birds, I, Plate 60.

There are two remarkably distinct varieties of this species found in Massachusetts. Both are called the Shad Bush, from flowering when the shad begin to ascend the streams. first is also called

The

The JUNE BERRY. 4. botryàpium. This is a small, graceful tree, from fifteen to twenty-five, sometimes thirty feet high, with a few, slender, distant branches, usually growing in upland woods. The bark is of a reddish green; that of the branches and stems, of a rich purplish brown, and very smooth. The leaves are two or three inches long and rather more than half that breadth, oval, varying from ovate to elliptic and obovate, sharply and finely serrate, usually somewhat cordate at base, and abruptly acuminate, smooth on both surfaces or scattered with a few silken hairs, when just expanded, afterwards smooth, purple when young, paler beneath. Petioles one fourth or one fifth the length of the leaves. Stipules very slender, lanceolate, invested with silky hairs, purple or faint crimson, falling off with the investing scales of the buds. Outer scales roundish, concave; inner, lanceolate, silky; all, crimson or purple, smooth without, silky-villose within. Flowers large, in spreading, often somewhat pendulous racemes, of from 4 to 8, on the ends of the branches, expanding in April or May, just as the leaves are beginning to open, with small, purple or faint crimson bracts at the base of the partial flower-stalks and often near the flowers. Segments of the calyx acuminate, edged and lined with silky down. Petals white, linear-lanceolate, narrowed at base, three times as long as the calyx. Fruit pear-shaped, purplish, very sweet and pleasant, ripening in June, earlier than any other fruit, and much sought for by birds.

The union of the crimson or purple of the scales and stipules, with the pure white of the flowers, and the glossy, silken, scat

tered hairs of the opening leaves, gives a delicate beauty to this early welcome promise of the woods.

Dr. Darlington says that the fruit is considerably improved in size and quality by long culture.

A tree of this species standing near the comb manufactory in Chester, measured five feet seven inches in circumference, at five feet from the ground.

The second variety has been called the SWAMP PYRUS; SWAMP SUGAR PEAR; A. ovális. The leaves are oval oblong, finely and sharply serrate, and finely acuminate, downy on both surfaces when young, very downy and white beneath; petioles, peduncles and calyx covered with a silken down; stipules slender, linear; segments of the calyx acute, ciliate; petals obovate, twice as long as the calyx, more persistent than in the last variety.

This is a smaller tree than the preceding, but sometimes rises to twelve or fifteen feet. It is usually, however, a shrub It has a great resemblance to it, so that many botanists, and, among them, Dr. Torrey and Dr. Hooker, are disposed to consider it a variety of the same species. It cannot be easily determined what constitutes a specific difference, and what should be regarded as only an accidental variation. The points of distinction in this plant, however, are more numerous and more marked than are to be found between many nearly allied species in other genera. The leaves, when just opening, are completely invested, on the under surface, with a close, velvety, whitish down, while those of the Botryapium have only a few silken hairs; and a similar difference, not so marked, may be observed in the inflorescence. The leaves are less sharply serrated, the serratures being sometimes hardly visible. The racemes are longer, closer and more erect than in the foregoing, and the petals of the corolla more distinctly obovate. It usually occurs in low, moist grounds, and is one of the earliest and most conspicuous ornaments of swampy woods. The fruit is more juicy and agreeable than that of the former. Still there is not in the fruit a tithe of the difference which we observe between apples from the same orchard, and growing on trees which sprung from seeds of the same fruit.

Looked at as they are found in Massachusetts, these would, without hesitation, be regarded as two species. But when all the varieties, from the northern to the southern extremities of their native regions are examined, and found to run into each other by almost imperceptible gradations, they are very justly considered as only forms of one species. It is after such an examination that Drs. Torrey and Gray have arranged all the varieties under the one species A. Canadensis.-Flora of N. A., I, 473.

Dr. Hooker says (Fl. Bor. Am. I, 203) that Amelanchier ovális, according to Dr. Richardson, abounds in the sandy plains of the Saskatchawan, where its wood is prized by the Cree Indians for making pipe-stems and arrows; and it is thence termed by the Canadian voyageurs, bois de flêche. Its berries, which are about the size of a pea, are the finest fruit in the country; and are used by the Cree Indians, both in a fresh and in a dried. state. They make excellent puddings, very little inferior to plum-pudding."

This plant, as described by the different botanists, affords a striking instance of the effect produced by climate. It is spoken of by Dr. Richardson, in the cold regions where he found it growing, as quite a tree. In England, where it has been cultivated, it is a small tree. In Massachusetts, one variety is a low tree, the other a shrub. Dr. Darlington describes it, in Pennsylvania, as having a stem from two to four or five feet high; and Elliot speaks of it as occurring, very rarely, as a small shrub two to three feet high. It is a northern plant, and he probably noticed it on its very extreme southern limit.

It would be an interesting experiment, well worth trying, to ascertain how far this fruit might be improved by the same kind of cultivation which has been given to the apple. All of the apple family seem to be particularly susceptible of amelioration. And if, by a long course of improvement, this fruit should be made to differ from its original stock as much as the golden pippin differs from the sour crab-apple from which it is supposed to have been formed, there are few fruits now known superior to what it would become.

The QUINCE TREE, Cydònia, is always a low, crooked tree, with straggling, tortuous branches. The flowers are large and showy, so that it would be well worth cultivating for them only; and the rich golden or orange fruit, weighing down the branches in autumn, is still more beautiful. The dark leaves, too, showing, when moved by the wind, their whitish, downy under surface, contrast agreeably with most of the other plants among which it makes its appearance in the corner of a garden.

It springs readily from seed, but is most easily and commonly propagated by layers. It may, also, be grafted upon the thorn, and thus add its beauty to the useful hedge.

It is said by De Candolle to be native in rocky places and hedges in the south of Europe.-Prod. II, 638.

FAMILY XXVIII. THE ALMOND FAMILY. AMYGDALEÆ.

LINDLEY.

Trees or shrubs, with simple, alternate leaves, white or pink flowers, a calyx of 5 parts, a corolla of 5 petals, a single style, and fruit a drupe, or what is usually called a stone fruit. They are distinguished from the Rose and Apple Family by the fruit being a drupe, by their bark yielding gum, and by the presence of hydrocyanic acid in the leaves and kernel. The family includes the Almond tree, the Peach tree, the Apricot tree, the Plum and the Cherry trees.

The plants belonging to this family, are, with only three or four exceptions, natives of cold or temperate climates of the northern hemisphere. They are distinguished, in their properties, from those of the two preceding families, with which they have many points of resemblance, and to which they are by some writers united, by the presence, in the kernel and leaves, of the deadly poison known by the name of prussic or hydrocyanic acid. This renders the kernels of the peach and cherry so dangerous when used as food, and gives to noyau and the

other intoxicating liquors which are flavored by them, their fatal effects; and this principle, in the leaves of some species of cherry, as in the goat-killing cherry of Nepaul, and the Carolina cherry of this country, and in the leaves of our common black cherry, when wilted, renders them poisonous to some quadrupeds. This principle, however, is diffused in so slight a proportion through the pulp of the fruit, that the cherry, the peach and nectarine, the plum and the apricot, are a very delicious, and, in moderate quantities, a perfectly wholesome food.

The prunes, which we import from France, are the dried fruit of some varieties of the plum, which contain a sufficient quantity of sugar to preserve the fruit from decay, and even to yield a considerable quantity of brandy by distillation. The leaves of the sloe and bird cherry of Europe have been used to adulterate the black teas of China and even to take their place. Oil is expressed from the kernel of the almond, and from that of some of the plums. The bark of plants of this family contains an astringent principle, which renders it capable of being used in tanning, in dyeing yellow, and as a tonic and febrifuge in medicine. All of them yield a gum not unlike gum tragacanth or gum arabic, which is highly nutritious. It is doubtful if it ever flows without injuring the tree; and, if the wound be not. healed, the loss is at last fatal.

Plants of this family, native and introduced, are peculiarly liable to the attacks of insects. Canker-worms of one or of several species, (Phala`na and Anisópteryx, Harris, 332—4), often strip them of their leaves; the tent-caterpillars, (Clisiocámpa Americana, ib. 266-9), pitch their tents among the branches, and carry on their dangerous depredations; the slugworms, the offspring of a fly called Selándria cérasi, (ib. 3834), reduce the leaves to skeletons and thus destroy them; the cherry-weevils, (Rhyncho`nus cérasi, ib. 68), penetrate their bark, cover their branches with warts, and cause them to decay; and borers, (Buprestis divaricata, ib. 43, or the still more pernicious Egèria exitiòsa, p. 233), gnaw galleries in their trunks and devour the inner bark and sap-wood.