Note E164 — 34.
Reading edition
"Seruice trees." Dr. R. A. Prior, in his Popular Names of British Plants, 1870, p. 209, says: "Service-, or, as in Ph. Holland's Pliny more correctly spelt, Servise-tree, from L. Cervisia, its fruit having from ancient times been used for making a fermented liquor, a kind of beer:
Et pocula læti Fermento atque acidis imitantur vitea sorbis. —Virg. Georgics III. 379.
Diefenbach remarks (Or. Eur. 102): 'bisweilen bedeutet cervisia einen nicht aus Getreide gebranten Trank;' and Evelyn tells us in his Sylva (ch. xv.), that 'ale and beer brewed with these berries, being ripe, is an incomparable drink.' The Cerevisia of the ancients was made from malt, and took its name, we are told by Isidore of Seville, from Ceres, Cereris, but this has come to be used in a secondary sense without regard to its etymological meaning, just as in Balm-tea we use tea in the sense of an infusion, without regard to its being properly the name of a different plant." Wild Service, the rowan tree; Pyrus aucuiparia, Gärt.