service-tree, in botany; a genus of plants belonging to the class of *icofandra*, and to the order of *trigynia*. The calyx is quinquefied; the petals are five; the berry is below the flower, soft and containing three seeds. There are three species; the aucuparia, domestica, and liebrida.

1. The aucuparia, mountain-ash, quicken-tree, quickbeam, or roan-tree, rises with a straight upright stem and regular branching head, twenty or thirty feet high or more, covered with a smooth greyish brown bark; pinnated leaves of eight or ten pair of long narrow, serrated folioles, and an odd one, smooth on both sides; and large umbellate clusters of white flowers at the sides and ends of the branches, succeeded by clusters of fine red berries, ripe in autumn and winter. There is a variety with yellow striped leaves. This species grows wild in many parts of this island in mountainous places, woods, and hedge-rows, often growing to the size of timber; and is admitted into most ornamental plantations, for the beauty of its growth, foliage, flowers, and fruit; the latter, in particular, being produced in numerous red large bunches all over the tree, exhibit a fine appearance in autumn and winter, till devoured by the birds, especially the blackbird and thrush, which are so allured by this fruit as to flock from all parts and feed on it voraciously.—In the island of Jura the juice of the berries is employed as an acid for punch. It is probable that this tree was in high esteem with the Druids; for it is more abundant than any other tree in the neighbourhood of those Druidical circles of stones, so common in North Britain. It is still believed by some persons, that a branch of this tree can defend them from enchantment or witchcraft. Even the cattle are supposed to be preserved by it from danger. The dairy-maid drives them to the summer pastures with a rod of the roan-tree, and drives them home again with the same. In Strathspey, we are told, a hoop is made of the wood of this tree on the 1st of May, and all the sheep and lambs are made to pass through it.

2. The *domestica*, or cultivated service-tree, with eatable fruit, grows with an upright stem, branching 30 or 40 feet high or more, having a brownish bark, and the young shoots in summer covered with a mealy down; pinnated leaves of eight or ten pair of broadish deeply serrated lobes and an odd one, downy underneath, and large umbellate clusters of white flowers at the sides and ends of the branches, succeeded by bunches of large, fleshy, edible red fruit, of various shapes and sizes. This tree is a native of the southern warm parts of Europe, where its fruit is used at table as a dessert, and it is cultivated here in many of our gardens, both as a fruit-tree and as an ornament to diversify hardy plantations.

3. The *liebrida*, or mongrel service tree of Gothland, grows twenty or thirty feet high; it has half-pinnated leaves, very downy underneath; and clusters of white flowers, succeeded by bunches of round reddish berries in autumn.