Nevertheless, the crab has valuable qualities besides its beauty. "Fetch me a dozen crab-tree staves," shouts the porter of King Henry's palace, "and strong ones. I'll scratch your heads!" (_K. Henry VIII._, Act v. sc. 3). Those golfers who have passed their meridian surely remember that crab was reckoned the only material for club-heads in the old days of hard "gutties." But there was no great store of crab-trees in the land; so when golfers began to become like the sand of the sea for multitude the supply ran out, and club-masters carved the heads out of beech. A tougher substitute has now been found in the American persimmon (_Diospyros_), but methinks our native crab would hold its own with any other wood if it were still to be had. Probably the largest crab-tree in Scotland (if it still stands) is one at Kelloe, in Berwickshire, which Sir R. Christison measured in 1876, and found to be 50 feet high and 8 feet in girth. The wild pear (_Pyrus communis_) is much more rare in Britain than the crab-tree, being found only in the southern English counties, and even there it is difficult to decide whether any pear tree is really wild or only a relic of cultivation. The timber of the pear, whether wild or cultivated, is very beautiful, and is one of the choicest for carved work; whereof a fine example may be seen among the panels in Windsor Castle. The Gean Tree, or Wild Cherry In discoursing about the hawthorn, I assigned to it the first place for beauty of blossom among our native trees, but in holding that supremacy it has a dangerous rival in the gean, or wild cherry, which, to quote John Evelyn's eulogy, "will thrive into stately trees, beautified with blossoms of a surprising whiteness, greatly relieving the sedulous bees and attracting birds." In truth, the verdict upon the rivalry of the hawthorn and the gean must be "honours easy," for if the fragrance of the first turns the scale in its favour in spring, the gean scores heavily in autumn through the gorgeous hues of its fading foliage, no other British tree, if it be not the rowan, equalling it in sunset splendour. Nor is the flower of the gean without a fragrance--more delicate and less powerful than that of the hawthorn. Elwes tells how the late Mr. Foljambe, of Osberton, when old and quite blind, used to cause his son to lead him out among the cherry trees when they were in blossom, that he might enjoy their scent.