Читать книгу The Pears of New York - U. P. Hedrick - Страница 11

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Providence ordained Belgium to produce the modern pear. The evolution of the pear proceeded slowly, indeed, until its culture became common on the clayey and chalky soils in the cool, moist climate of Belgium, where flavor, aroma, texture, size, and color reach perfection. The pear was improved more in one century in Belgium than in all the centuries that had past. The part Providence played in endowing the Belgians with an ideal soil and climate for the pear, is but one of two causes of the results in improving the pear in this country. The other is that the Belgians, ever notable horticulturists, give the pear assiduous care, cultivate only the most approved varieties, and in breeding, aim ever at high quality, so that Belgian pear-growers, as well as an ordained soil and climate, must be given credit for the modern pear.

The early history of the pear in Belgium follows step by step that of the pear in France. In the sixteenth century, botanists were numerous in the Low Countries, their zeal and activity showing forth in several of the best of the early herbals. These herbalists, however, gave scant attention to the pear. Dodoens, most noted Belgian botanist of the century, dismissed the matter of varieties with the statement that the names change from village to village, and that it is therefore useless to give them. From this we may assume that a considerable number of pears were cultivated in Belgium at the time Dodoens wrote, about the middle of the sixteenth century.

Pear-breeding began in Belgium about 1730, when Nicolas Hardenpont, 1705–1774, a priest in his native town of Mons, made a large sowing of pear seed with a view of obtaining new pears of superior quality. Time is fleeting in breeding tree fruits, and the Abbé Hardenpont waited nearly 30 years before introducing his selected seedlings, and then, beginning in 1758, he introduced one new variety after another until a dozen or more new pears were accredited to him. At least six of these are still grown in Europe, but only one, the Passe Colmar, is known in America. But before going further with the work of the Belgian breeders, it is necessary to take stock of what was on hand before their time.

La Quintinye, the most noted French pomologist of his time, in 1690 listed 67 pear varieties. The Belgians probably had all of these. What were they? Most of them were old sorts—some were centuries old. All, so far as their histories show, originated by chance in garden, orchard, hedge row, and forest. No one seems yet to have planted seed with a view of obtaining new and better pears. Camerarius in 1694 had made known the fact of sex in plants. Soon after, experiments in hybridization began, but no one as yet had hybridized pears. Lastly, nearly all pears, before the Belgians began to improve them, were crisp or breaking in flesh, the crevers of the French, while the soft-fleshed, melting pears, the beurrés of the French, were as yet hardly known. Now, mostly owing to the work of the Belgians, the buttery pears predominate.

Of the means by which Hardenpont obtained his superior pears, there is no precise knowledge. Whether his new sorts were lucky chances out of a large number of promiscuous seedlings, or whether he was a pioneer in hybridizing can never be known. Du Mortier, a distinguished Belgian botanist, gives the credit of hybridization to the Abbé, basing his opinion on the fact that the characters of most of Hardenpont’s varieties are plainly a commingling of two well-known parents which could hardly be the case if they were happy chances were fate ever so kindly disposed.

Hardenpont soon had many imitators in Belgium. Indeed, the Belgians seem to have been quite carried off their feet by pear-breeding, and during the first half of the nineteenth century a fad like the “tulip craze” of Holland and the “mulberry craze” of America reigned in the country. Among the breeders are found the names of priests, physicians, scientists, apothecaries, attorneys, tradesmen, and gentlemen of leisure. The introduction of new varieties made notable in horticulture the towns of Mons, Tournaii, Enghien, Louvain, Malines, and Brussels. The awarding of medals for new pears produced the horticultural sensations of the times. Hundreds if not thousands of new varieties were introduced, of which many, it is true, have proved worthless, others of but secondary merit, while still others, as we shall find, are even now among the best pears under cultivation. But the great fact, be it remembered, is that these amateur pear-breeders wrought in a few years a complete transformation in a fruit that had been domesticated and had been fairly stable for over 2000 years.

A few names besides Hardenpont stand out prominently and must be mentioned. Of these, Van Mons is best known. Jean Baptiste Van Mons, 1765–1842, was a pharmacist, physicist, and physician, one of the savants of his time, who, late in the eighteenth century, under the potent spell cast by Hardenpont’s work, began to breed pears. Space forbids an account of Van Mons’ experiments. Suffice to say that he introduced more than two scores of pears having lasting merit, and that in the height of his career he had in his “Nursery of Fidelity” at Louvain, eighty thousand seedlings. Van Mons outlives in fame the Belgian pear-breeders of his time because he propounded a theory for the origination of new varieties of plants, and this in its turn is famed as the first complete system of plant improvement. Van Mons contributed but little of direct value to plant-breeding, but indirectly he gave a great impetus to breeding pears and to the culture of the pear, more especially in America, and we must therefore glance at his theory and trace more in detail its influence on American pear-growing.

Van Mons’ theory, in brief, as expounded in various papers, is: A species does not vary in the place in which it is born; it reproduces only plants which resemble itself. The causes of variation are changes in soil, climate, or temperature. Whenever a species produces one or many varieties, these varieties continue to vary always. The source of all variation, which is transmissible by sowing, resides in the seeds. The older a variety, the less the seedlings vary, and the more they tend to return toward the primitive form, without being able ever to reach that state; the younger or newer the variety, the more the seedlings vary.

In putting his theory in practice Van Mons took the first seeds from wild plants or those little improved, from which he grew seedlings, and from these the seeds were taken from the first fruits to ripen for new sowings. This practice he repeated generation after generation. Thus, it is seen that Van Mons was an early apostle of selection. He is said to have distributed over 400 varieties, about 40 of which are still under cultivation. It is to be feared, however, that Van Mons’ theory was preconceived without experiment or even observation for a foundation. He devoted a life of most admirable zeal to verifying and developing this vision of his early years with some material reward it is true, but with a better foundation his prodigious labors would have yielded greater direct results in improving the pear. Still, the indirect results, his influence on the pomologists of two continents, even though they did not subscribe to his theories, was more valuable than the work of one mind and one pair of hands could possibly have been.

There must always be pioneers, men who stray from beaten paths, but pioneers seldom exert wide and deep influence at once—leave the worn path, so to speak, and at once construct a macadamized road—yet this was what Van Mons did. Pomologists agree that until his time no man had exerted so profound an influence on pomology. His love of discovery and love of labor permeated fruit-growing in Europe and America. Fortunately, it was the age of the amateur fruit-grower. Pleasure and progress, driven by curiosity, counted for more than commercial success, so that Van Mons’ new varieties at once gave him wide fame. He was made known to American pear-growers by Robert Manning who distributed his new varieties in this country and described them in the horticultural literature of the day and in his Book of Fruits published in 1838. Later, Andrew Jackson Downing, the brilliant genius of American horticulture, published Van Mons’ theories and described many of his new pears in his Fruits and Fruit Trees, which came from the press in 1845. Thus, Van Mons became the recognized authority in America on all matters relating to the pear. Indeed, it is hardly too much to say that we owe him obligations as the founder of pear-culture in this country.

But the work of the Belgians does not end with Van Mons. There were other breeders of pears, who, though not to be classed with Van Mons as a Titan, lacking the quality of mind to set forth a new philosophy, helped to enliven the impulse given by their leader to the improvement of the pear by originating new varieties. Chief of these are Major Espéren, of Malines, who introduced twenty of the pears mentioned in the Pears of New York; Bivort, who has twenty-three to his credit; Gregoire, forty-two; Simon Bouvier, eleven; De Jonghe, six; and De Nelis, five. While, if the lists of varieties in the last two chapters of this text be scanned for Belgians who introduced but one, two, or three new pears, the list runs up into the hundreds. Labor finds its summit in the work of these Belgian pear-breeders, who obtained petty rewards by sifting millions of seedlings through the coarse meshes of the sieve of selection. We can pardon these enthusiastic breeders with grace for over-zealousness in naming varieties obtained with such prodigious efforts.