784 SERVIAN LANGUAGE, <ko. SERVICE TREE emperor Leopold I. of Germany, by Branko- vitch (1645-1711). A partial revival began in 17.s. when a Slavic press was founded at Venice. The archimandrite J. Raitch (1726- 1801) gained a lasting reputation by his " His- tory of the Slavs" (4 vols., Vienna, 1792 '5). But the first who undertook to write a work in the popular dialect was Dosithei Obrado- vitch (1739-1811), a monk, who for 25 years had travelled all over Europe, and at his death was senator and instructor of the children of Czerny George. His complete works were published at Belgrade in 1838 in 9 vols. De- metrius Davidovitch from 1814 to 1822 edited at Vienna the first Servian newspaper, and Vuk Stefanovitch Karaiitch (1787-1864) fixed the present Servian alphabet, and reduced the language to certain general rules and prin- ciples. His collection of the Servian popular songs (4 vols., Vienna, 1814-'38) drew the at- tention of foreign nations to their beauty. In Germany, a general interest in them was ex- cited by Goethe, Talvi ( Volktliedtr der Serben, 2 vols., Halle, 1825-'6), J. Grimm, and others; and many translations have since been pub- lished. In England some of the songs have been made known by Bowring and Robert Bul- wer (" Owen Meredith "). Among the best modern Servian writers are Simeon Milutino- vitrh, author of a national epic, Serbianka (Leipsic, 1826), describing the Servian war of 1812, and of a history of Servia during the years 1813-'14 (Leipsic, 1887), and Archbish- op Mushitzki of Carlovitz, whose works were published at Pesth in 1888. The chief seats of Servian literature are Pesth, Neusatz, and Belgrade. The last named city now has sev- eral newspapers, and a university in which law, philosophy, and the sciences are taught. There is also a Servian society of savants, formed in 1847, and reorganized in 1863 with the title of Srpsko utcheno drustvo. Collec- tions of the popular poetry of Montenegro have been published by Tchubar Tchoikovitch. Among the Roman Catholic Serbs, the Dal- matians had as early as the 12th century an interesting literature. An old chronicle of 1161, written in Slavic by a priest of Dioclea, is still partly extant in the original, and wholly in a Latin translation. Toward the close of the 15th century the city of Ragusa became an Illyrian Athens, and produced many dis- tinguished authors, especially poets. The Ra- gusan and Dalmatian dialects which appear in their literary productions were very similar to the Servian as purified by Karajitch, and through the study of these ancient poets and the labors of L. Gaj, editor of an "Illyrian Na- tional Gazette " at Agrara, the literary language of almost all the Serbs is now very much the same, though still written partly with the Cyrillic instead of the Roman alphabet. In the beginning of 1868, 14 political, 5 literary, 2 agricultural, 3 pedagogic, and 2 religious peri- odicals were published in the Servian language. A good account of the history of Servian literature, in English, is given in Talvi's " His- torical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations " (New York, 1850). See also Schafarik, Oetchichte der sudslawischen Literatur (Vienna, 1863-'4). SERVICE BERRY. See JUNE BERBT. SERVICE TREE (formerly spelled ,erri*e, from Lat. ceretisia, beer, a fermented drink having been made from the fruit), a European tree belonging to that section of the genus pyrus which includes the mountain ashes. The true service tree, P. sorbus (or sorbus domettica), is barely hardy in England ; it is most abundant in France and Italy, and occurs in north- ern Africa and western Asia. This and the mountain ash were placed by Linnaeus in the genus sorbus (Lat. sorbere, to drink down, in allusion to their use for making a beverage), and they are sometimes in England called sorbs; but later botanists, finding that the chief dif- ference between these trees and the apples and Service Tree (Pyrus sorbus). pears consisted in the former having compound leaves and flowers in broad cymes, included them all in the genus pyrus. The service tree is long-lived, some specimens being thought to be 1,000 years old; it grows from 20 to 60 ft. high, with a large pyramidal head; the bark- is smooth except on old trees, where it is rough and full of cracks ; the leaves have six or more pairs of serrate leaflets, with an odd one; the flowers are cream-colored, and the fruit, which is much larger than in any of the mountain ashes, is when ripe greenish brown, with a reddish tinge ; eight or more varieties of fruit have been described, but the principal ones are the apple-shaped and pear-shaped, both about the size of a common gooseberry. Its chief value is in its wood, which is consid- ered to be harder and heavier than that of any other European tree, weighing when dry 72 Ibs. 2 oz. to the cubic foot, having a compact grain and reddish tinge, and taking a very fine polish ; when not properly seasoned it twists
