The snowy pears cultivated in France to make the drink called perry have become wild in the woods here and there.[1157] They constitute the greater number of the so-called “cider pears,” which are distinguished by the sour taste of the fruit independent of the character of the leaf. The descriptions of the Greeks and Romans are too imperfect for us to be certain if they possessed this species. It may be presumed that they did, however, since they made cider.[1158] +Sandy Pear+, +Chinese Pear+—_Pyrus sinensis_, Lindley.[1159] I have already mentioned this species, which is nearly allied to the common pear. It is wild in Mongolia and Mantchuria,[1160] and cultivated in China and Japan. Its fruit, large rather than good, is used for preserving. It has also been recently introduced into European gardens for experiments in crossing it with our species. This will very likely take place naturally. +Apple+—_Pyrus Malus_, Linnæus. The apple tree grows wild throughout Europe (excepting in the extreme north), in Anatolia, the south of the Caucasus, and the Persian province of Ghilan.[1161] Near Trebizond, the botanist Bourgeau saw quite a small forest of them.[1162] In the mountains of the north-west of India it is “apparently wild,” as Sir Joseph Hooker writes in his _Flora of British India_. No author mentions it as growing in Siberia, in Mongolia, or in Japan.[1163] There are two varieties wild in Germany, the one with glabrous leaves and ovaries, the other with leaves downy on the under side, and Koch adds that this down varies considerably.[1164] In France accurate authors also give two wild varieties, but with characters which do not tally exactly with those of the German flora.[1165] It would be easy to account for this difference if the wild trees in certain districts spring from cultivated varieties whose seeds have been accidentally dispersed. The question is, therefore, to discover to what degree the species is probably ancient and indigenous in different countries, and, if it is not more ancient in one country than another, how it was gradually extended by the accidental sowing of forms changed by the crossing of varieties and by cultivation. The country in which the apple appears to be most indigenous is the region lying between Trebizond and Ghilan. The variety which there grows wild has leaves downy on the under side, short peduncles, and sweet fruit,[1166] like _Malus communis_ of France, described by Boreau. This indicates that its prehistoric area extended from the Caspian Sea nearly to Europe. Piddington gives in his _Index_ a Sanskrit name for the apple, but Adolphe Pictet[1167] informs us that this name _seba_ is Hindustani, and comes from the Persian _sêb_, _sêf_. The absence of an earlier name in India argues that the now common cultivation of the apple in Kashmir and Thibet, and especially that in the north-west and central provinces of India, is not very ancient. The tree was probably known only to the western Aryans.