[Illustration: FRUIT OF HAWTHORN (_Cratægus oxyacantha_)] Yet would not the disappearance of any of them work such a change in British landscape, as it would suffer if we were to lose the hawthorn, which is also a member of the rose order. It is the most beautiful native flowering tree we possess, for the laburnum, the horse chestnut, and the catalpa must be written off as exotics, though, happily, they have proved most successful colonists. Not long ago I was driving out from New York to visit Mr. Roosevelt in Long Island. My companion and cicerone was one who gained more than the common measure of esteem while he was American Ambassador in London. When I expressed to him warmly my admiration for the masses of _Cornus florida_ which formed the undergrowth of the woods bordering our route, and which (it was in May) were displaying their snowy blossoms in endless drifts and wreaths: "Very beautiful," he said; "but I would rather have your British hawthorn blossom with its fragrance." This was high testimony from one in whose country Professor Sargent has enumerated no fewer than one hundred and forty-three distinct American species of _Cratægus_ or hawthorn, many of which produce beautiful flowers; but none of those which I have seen are equal to the single species indigenous to the British Isles--_Cratægus oxyacantha_. In saying a single species, I am aware that later botanists have distinguished as a species a form found on the Continent and in the midland and south-eastern English counties; but Bentham and Hooker admitted this only as a variety. In Scotland we always speak of hawthorn blossom, but in England you shall never hear that term, for there they call it May blossom, yet you may seldom find it in bloom till near the end of that month. In Brand's _Antiquities_ (1777) it is stated that "it was an old custom in Suffolk in most of the farmhouses that any servant who could bring in a branch of hawthorn in full blossom on the 1st of May was entitled to a dish of cream for breakfast. This custom is now disused, not so much from the reluctance of the masters to give the reward, as from the inability of the servants to find the white thorn in flower." The reason for this is to be sought in a change, not in the flowering season, but in the calendar; the old style during the eighteenth century being twelve days in arrear of the new style, so that May Day was equivalent to what is now 12th May. It will be remembered that, while the new style was enacted in Scotland by James VI.'s Privy Council in 1600, it was not until 1751 that an Act of Parliament caused it to be adopted in England, which did the Suffolk peasants out of all chance of cream for breakfast.