Читать книгу The Pears of New York - U. P. Hedrick - Страница 15

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The pear is a popular fruit in America, but its culture as a commercial product is limited to a few favored localities. From the earliest records of fruit-growing in America the pear has been grown less than the apple and peach and scarcely more than the cherry and plum. In Europe, it is a question if the pear is not more commonly grown than the apple, and is much more common than the plum and the peach, the last-named fruit being grown out of doors for most part only in southern Europe. Pears are more varied in size, shape, texture, and flavor of flesh than others of the hardy tree-fruits, and in length of season exceed all others excepting the apple. Varieties of pears, possibly, have the charm of individuality more marked than varieties of its orchard associates. The trees, where environment permits their culture, are not difficult to grow, and attain greater size, produce larger crops, and live longer than any other hardy fruit. Why, then, is the pear not more popular in America? Conditions of climate, pests, season of ripening, taste, and trade prevent the expansion of pear-culture on this side of the Atlantic.

The climate in most parts of America is uncongenial to the pear. Pears from the European stock, to which most varieties grown in America belong, thrive only in relatively equable climates, and do not endure well the sudden and extreme variations in climate to which most parts of this continent are subject. Extremes of heat or cold, wetness or dryness, are fatal to the pear. In North America, therefore, commercial pear-culture is confined to favored localities on the Atlantic seaboard, about the Great Lakes, and on the Pacific slope. Even in these favored regions, pears sent to market come largely from the plantations of specialists. On the Atlantic seaboard, European pears are products of commerce only in southern New England and New York, westward through Ohio on the shores of Lake Erie, and in the southern lake regions of Michigan. Away from these bodies of water to the Pacific, varieties of European pears refuse to grow except with the utmost care in culture and selection of sites. On the Pacific slope, in the hardy-fruit regions, the pear reaches its highest development in the New World. Oriental pears, or varieties having Oriental blood, as Kieffer and Le Conte, are grown in every part of America where the culture of hardy fruits is attempted.

Liability to loss by pests is a great detriment to the popularity of the pear in America. The insect pests of pears are numerous. Codling-moths attack the fruit wherever the pear is grown in America, and can be kept down only by expensive arsenical sprays. The psylla, while irregular in its outbreaks, is most damaging and hard to control when it appears. These are the chief insect enemies, but a dozen others take more or less toll from tree or fruit. Foliage and fruit are attacked by several parasitic fungi, of which pear-scab is most troublesome, requiring treatment wherever the pear is grown, and under favorable conditions for the fungus preventives often fail to give the fruits a fair cheek. But of all diseases pear-blight is the most serious, its effects and virulency being such as to give it the popular name “fire-blight.” It is caused by a bacterium which cannot be checked by sprays, and must be combatted with expensive and unsatisfactory sanitary measures, such as cutting out branches and trees, so drastic as to make impossible commercial cultivation of pears in regions where climate favors the disease.

Pears compete with apples more than with any other fruit, but are at a disadvantage with this near relative in having a much shorter period during which the fruits can be used. Varieties of the two fruits begin to ripen at nearly the same season, but there are few sorts of pears in season later than December, and these are of poorer quality than the fall varieties; while apples are abundant and of prime quality four or five months later, and may be kept until early apples usher in a new season. During most of its season, also, the pear must compete with the perishable summer and autumn plums and peaches, so luscious and delectable that the firmer and less highly flavored pome-fruits suffer in comparison.

Still another reason why the pear is not a popular dessert fruit in America is that, of all fruits, the varieties of this one are the most variable in quality of the product. Sorts that should produce pears of highest quality bear fruits poor or indifferent in texture and flavor in unfavorable seasons, on unsuitable soils, or under neglect. Good pears can be grown only when environmental factors are favorable and under the most generous treatment. Extensive cultivation of the Kieffer and its kin for canning has hindered the cultivation of pears for the fruit-stand and to grace the table as a dessert fruit. So common has the Kieffer become that many of the present generation are hardly aware that the pear may be a delicious fruit to eat out of hand.

Lastly, the pear falls short of the apple as a commercial product because it is not nearly so satisfactory to handle as a commercial crop. Pears are more difficult to pack, and do not stand transportation as well as apples. They cannot be kept in cold storage nearly as long, and decay more quickly when brought into warmer temperatures. The demand for evaporated pears is slight in comparison with that for evaporated apples, and although perry, the expressed juice of pears, is quite as refreshing as cider, this by-product of the fruit is little known in America. As a prepared product, the pear surpasses the apple only as a canned fruit. Failing in comparison with the apple, as a commercial product, pears are largely left to fruit connoisseurs, and with these a generation ago the pear was the fruit of fruits, many splendid collections of it having been made in regions where pears could be grown. With the expansion of commercial fruit-growing, collections of pears, and with them many choice varieties, have gone out of cultivation—more is the pity—and pear-growing has expanded least of all the fruit industries in the United States.

With this brief discussion of the present status of pear-culture in this country, we can proceed to trace the history of the pear with more exactness by reason of knowing its limitations under American conditions.

The peach is the only hardy fruit that belongs to the heroic age of Spanish discovery in the New World. Pears, apples, plums, and cherries came to the new continent with the French and English. The early records of fruit-growing in America show that the pear came among the first luxuries of the land in the French and English settlements from Canada to Florida. Pioneers in any country begin at once to cultivate the soil for the means of sustenance. Naturally, cereals and easily-grown nutritious vegetables receive attention first as giving more immediate harvests and more sustaining fare to supplement game and fish. Agriculture and gardening usually precede orcharding, and this was the case in early settlements in America, but not long. The first generation born in colonial America knew and used all of the hardy fruits from Europe; as many records attest, and of which there is confirmatory proof with the pear in many ancient pear-trees of great size near the old settlements, some of which were planted by the first settlers from Europe. Of pears, many notable trees planted by the hands of the first English and French who crossed the seas to settle the new country were conspicuous monuments in various parts of America in the memory of men still living, if, indeed, some of the old trees themselves are not still standing.

Of these ancient pear-trees, New England furnishes the most notable monuments to mark the introduction of this fruit in the New World. Fortunately, their histories have been preserved in several horticultural annals, and of these accounts the fullest and best is by Robert Manning, Jr., in the Proceedings of the American Pomological Society for 1875, pages 100 to 103. Manning’s notes throw so much light on the early history of the pear in New England, as well as upon the varieties then grown, that they are published in full.

“The Endicott Pear. The tradition in the Endicott family is that this tree was planted in 1630. It is said that the trees constituting the original orchard came over from England in June, in the Arabella with Governor Winthrop, or in one of the other ships of the fleet arriving at Salem in June. The farm on which the tree now stands, not having been granted to Endicott until 1632, it is not probable that the trees were planted there before that time, but they might have been at first set in the Governor’s town garden at Salem, where the Rev. Francis Higginson, on his arrival in the summer of 1629, found a vine-yard already planted. The tradition further states that the Governor said that the tree was of the same date with a sun-dial which formerly stood near it. This dial, after having passed through the hands of the Rev. William Bentley, D.D., is now in the Essex Institute in Salem, and bears the date 1630, with the Governor’s initials. The farm, which early bore the name of ‘Orchard,’ was occupied and cultivated by the Governor and his descendants for 184 years, from 1632 to 1816, and was held solely by the original grant until 1828, a period of 196 years. Under these circumstances the history of the tree is more likely to have been handed down correctly than if the estate had changed hands. It is certain that Governor Endicott was early engaged in propagating trees, for in a letter to John Winthrop in 1644, he speaks of having at least 500 trees burnt by his children setting fire near them, and, in a letter to John Winthrop, Jr., a year later, of being engaged to pay for 1500 trees.

“As early as 1763 the tree was very old and decayed. It was very much injured in the gale of 1804. In the gale of 1815 it was so much shattered that its recovery was considered doubtful. It was injured again in a gale about 1843. For the last fifty years it has been protected by a fence around it. In 1837 it was eighty feet high by measurement and fifty-five feet in the circumference of its branches, and does not probably vary much from these dimensions now. Two suckers have sprung up on opposite sides of the tree, which bear the same fruit as the original, proving it to be ungrafted. It stands near the site of the first mansion of the Governor, on a slope where it is somewhat sheltered from the north and north-west winds. The soil is a light loam, with a substratum of clay. Grafts taken from the old tree grow very vigorously. From a pomological point of view, the fruit is of no value. It is hardly of medium size, roundish, green, with more or less rough russet, very coarse, and soon decays.

“It may be of interest to state that the farm on which the old tree stands is again in the Endicott name, having lately been purchased by a descendant of the Governor. The tree stands in the town of Danvers originally a part of Salem.

“For further facts concerning this tree, see the Transactions of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society for 1837, and also an article by Charles M. Endicott, a descendant of the Governor, in Hovey’s Magazine of Horticulture, vol. xix, p. 254, June, 1853, from which the above account has been mainly derived. Each of these articles is illustrated with a cut of the pear.

“The Orange Pear. This tree is owned by Capt. Charles H. Allen, and stands in his yard on Hardy street, Salem. The Rev. Dr. Bentley, who died about 1820, investigated the history of this tree and found it to be then 180 years old, which would make it now 235 years old. The trunk is hollow, nine feet five inches in circumference in the smallest part near the ground; just below the limbs it is several inches more. The tree is more than forty feet high, and the limbs are supported by shores. It was grafted in the limbs, as a branch fifteen or twenty years old, shooting out several feet higher than a man’s head, produces ‘Button’ pears, and a large limb, part of which was ‘Button’ which grew out still higher up, was blown off several years ago. In the very favorable pear season of 1862 it bore thirteen and a half bushels of pears. It bears in alternate years, having produced eight and a half bushels in 1873. The brittleness of the limbs of old pear trees is well known, yet Capt. Allen, with a care worthy of imitation, gathers every pear, excepting about a dozen specimens, by hand.

“This variety was, until the introduction of the modern kinds, highly esteemed. It is above medium size, averaging fifty-six pears to the peck, globular obtuse pyriform, covered with thin russet, juicy when gathered early and ripened in the house; of pleasant flavor but rather deficient in this respect. It is ripe about the middle of September. It was considered by my father a native, and was called by him the American Orange, and after examination of the descriptions and plates, I cannot think it the same as the Orange Rouge or Orange d’Automne of Duhamel, Decaisne, and Leroy. The Hon. Paul Dudley, Esq., of Roxbury, in some ‘Observations on some of the Plants in New England with remarkable Instances of the Power of Vegetation,’ communicated to the Royal Society of London (I quote from the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ abridged, London, 1734, Vol. VI, Part II, p. 341), says: ‘An Orange Pear Tree grows the largest, and yields the fairest fruit. I know one of them near forty Foot high, that measures six Foot and six Inches in Girt, a Yard from the Ground, and has borne thirty Bushels at a Time, and this Year I measured an Orange pear, that grew in my own Orchard, of eleven Inches round the Bulge.’

“If this is, as believed, of native origin, it is the oldest American fruit in cultivation, unless we except the Apple pear, which is probably of about the same date. This is small, oblate, of pale yellow color, ripening in August. It is quite distinct from the Poire Pomme d’Hiver, of Leroy, and I think also from the Poire Pomme d’Été, of the same author. I had supposed the variety to be extinct, but last year discovered in a garden in Salem the remnant of an old tree with a trunk four feet in diameter, and still producing fruit.

“The Orange pear tree which produced the specimens exhibited, was inherited by the present owner from his father, to whom it came from his wife. It had descended to her almost from the first settlement of Salem, but partly in the female line, so that the name of the owner sometimes changed. The house on the estate was built in 1812, having replaced one which was pulled down after standing 150 years. Within the period of a generation there were standing in Salem several trees of the Orange pear, some of which were reputed to be more than two centuries old, and all of which were undoubtedly very ancient, but they are all now gone except Capt. Allen’s, the last one having been blown down in the winter of 1874–75. I have heard a tradition that this last mentioned tree was one of several imported from England and planted in gardens at intervals on the northerly side of the principal street in Salem. This tradition may or may not be true with regard to these trees, but it would not apply to the Allen tree, for the height at which it was grafted forbids the idea that it was imported from England in a grafted state.

“The Anthony Thacher Pear. This tree stands near the meadows about a fourth of a mile north of the Universalist church in Yarmouth, where Anthony Thacher’s house formerly stood. It is a large, rotten-hearted old tree. It has lost nearly all its old branches, but has thrown out many new ones. The late Judge George Thacher, who, if now living, would be 120 years old, inquired into its history, and made the matter certain that it was planted by Anthony Thacher about 1640. It is believed to be a grafted tree, as it contracts two or three inches at about a foot and a half from the ground. It is taken good care of and will probably last many years. It is now owned by the heirs of James C. Hallet. There are other trees of the same kind in the vicinity, but their age cannot be proved.

“The fruit is of medium size, ovate pyriform, green, changing to yellow at maturity, of tolerable quality, ripening early in September. For the specimens exhibited, as well as the facts above noted, I am indebted to the kindness of Amos Otis, Esq., of Yarmouth Port, who had made the local history of Cape Cod his study for the last fifty years, and who died much lamented on the 19th of October last.

“Anthony Thacher came from England in 1635, and after residing in Marshfield, removed to Yarmouth in 1639, being one of the three original grantees of land in that town. The late Dr. James Thacher, of Plymouth, author of the ‘American Orchardist’ (published in 1821), was a descendant of Anthony in the sixth generation. Anthony Thacher accompanied his cousin, Rev. John Avery, in that disastrous voyage of which Whittier has perpetuated the memory in his ballad, ‘The Swan Song of Parson Avery.’ Anthony Thacher got ashore on Thacher’s Island, the headland of Cape Ann, and gave name to the island. (See Whittier’s ‘Home Ballads’ and Young’s ‘Chronicles of the First Planters of Massachusetts,’ p. 485.)

“I endeavored, but without success, to obtain fruit from the pear tree planted at least as early as 1650, by Governor Prence, or Prince, at Eastham, on Cape Cod, and now owned by Capt. Ezekiel Doane. It is known as the Fall pear. It is about the size of a hen’s egg, tapering towards both ends, green, nearly covered with thin russet, of inferior quality, but not as coarse as the Endicott. In 1836 it was a flourishing, lofty tree, producing an average of fifteen bushels of fruit. It consisted of two stems, branching from the ground, the larger of which was blown down in the great storm of April, 1851. The portion now remaining is thirty-five feet high. It is a natural tree and has not failed of bearing for twenty years. It stands in low ground.

“The Pickering or Warden Pear. This tree was grafted on the 19th of April, 1775, the day the battle of Lexington was fought, and must have been at that time a small tree. It is called by the owner the Uvedale Warden or Pickering pear, which are synonyms of the Uvedale’s St. Germain or Pound, but it is entirely distinct from that variety, being much smaller as well as otherwise different. It resembles, and very probably is identical with, a variety which I have known as the English Warden, but which I do not find described in any pomological work, and have not seen for years. It is of medium size, turbinate, light yellow, with a dull brownish cheek, in use in winter, for cooking only. Paul Dudley says, in the paper above quoted, ‘I have a Warden Pear Tree that measures five Foot six Inches round.’

“The Pickering tree contracts suddenly at about a foot from the ground, where it must have been grafted. It shows no sign of being grafted elsewhere. Below the point of grafting, it is full two feet in diameter and is about twenty-five feet high. It stands in a low, moist place. The top was much injured by the great gale of September, 1869, losing several large limbs, but the tree is on the whole in good preservation. In the same garden is a tree probably as old or older, believed to be a Messire Jean.

“The estate, now much circumscribed from its original extent, on which this tree stands, has been in the same family since 1642, having been purchased in that year by John Pickering, who came from England in 1637, and built the house, now standing and occupied by the owner, in 1651. It is on Broad street, Salem. The tree was grafted by John Pickering, of the fifth generation.

“The Hon. Timothy Pickering, eminent for his incorruptible integrity and immovable firmness, who successively held the offices of Adjutant-general and Quartermaster-general in the Revolutionary army, and of Postmaster-general, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President Washington, and continued to hold the last named office under President Adams, was a brother of John. At the breaking out of the Revolution he was Colonel of the Essex regiment, and on the day when this tree was grafted by John Pickering, who was an invalid, his more vigorous brother mustered his regiment and marched to intercept the retreating British troops. Timothy Pickering was also interested in agriculture, having been Secretary of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, the oldest agricultural society in the United States, and after his return to Massachusetts, was the first President of the Essex County Agricultural Society. The estate on which the old pear tree stands was devised by John Pickering, who died unmarried, to his nephew John, son of Timothy, the most eminent American philologist of his time. On his death, it descended to his son John, the present owner, to whom I am indebted for the facts here stated, as well as for the specimens of fruit exhibited at Chicago last September.”

Out of an embarrassing number of references in regard to the early introduction of the pear in New England one may choose the following: Francis Higginson, writing in 1629, notes that pears are under cultivation in New England.[6] In the same year, a memorandum of the Massachusetts Company shows that seeds of pears, with those of other fruits were sent to the colony.[7] Trees from these seeds grew amazingly fast in the virgin soils of the colony, for John Josselyn, who made voyages to New England in 1638 and 1639, writing in his New England Rarities Discovered, notes that “fruit trees prosper abundantly” enumerating, among others, those of the pear.[8] Josselyn further says “the Kernels sown or Succors planted produce as fair and good fruit, without grafting, as the trees from which they were taken,” and that “the Countrey is replenished with fair and large Orchards.” As early as 1641 a nursery had been started in Massachusetts and no doubt was selling pear-trees. These probably came from seeds, for trees were not imported until in the next century. Varieties were few then as for many years later. In 1726, Paul Dudley, one of the Chief Justices of Massachusetts, in a paper in the Philosophical Transactions, says, “Our apples are without doubt as good as those of England, and much fairer to look to, and so are the pears, but we have not got all the sorts.” In another paragraph, Justice Dudley gives the following account of several varieties of pears in these first orchards in New England.

He says:[9]

“An Orange Pear Tree grows the largest and yields the fairest Fruit. I know one of them near forty Foot high, that measures six Foot and six Inches in Girt, a Yard from the Ground, and has borne thirty Bushels at a Time: and this year I measured an Orange Pear, that grew in my own Orchard, of eleven Inches round the Bulge. I have a Warden Pear Tree, that measures five Foot six Inches round. One of my Neighbors has a Bergamot Pear Tree that was brought from England in a Box, about the Year 1643, that now measures six Foot about, and has borne twenty-two Bushels of fine Pears in one Year. About twenty years since, the Owner took a Cyon, and grafted it upon a common Hedge Pear; but the Fruit does not prove altogether so good, and the Rind or Skin, is thicker than that of the Original.”

Thus, early in the history of Massachusetts, the pear was largely planted and became a prominent fruit. These early plantations grew so well that no doubt they inspired the horticulturists of the first half of the nineteenth century, of which the names of Dearborn, Hovey, Kenrick, the two Mannings, and Wilder are notable in the history of the pear in this country, to undertake the popularization of this fruit by extensive culture, by breeding new varieties, and by the introduction of the best pears from Europe. Their work, as we shall see later, gave pear-growing its first great impetus in America. Until the middle of the last century, the pear industry in America centered in Massachusetts; and most of the new varieties which originated in this country and nearly all of the introductions from abroad came from that state.

The pear was not neglected in the other New England states as the horticultural records of all attest, but its history in the several states is so similar in time and events that the account of its early culture in Massachusetts suffices for the whole region. It must, however, be noted that the pear was introduced in Maine at a very early date, probably by the French. In an orchard on the east bank of the Sheepscot, below Wiscasset Bay, a venerable pear-tree stood until early in the nineteenth century of such girt and height that it was supposed to be more than 200 years old. Of the planting of this orchard there are no records nor traditions. The most reasonable supposition was that the trees had been planted there by the French in one of the several attempts of France to colonize the coast of Maine.[10]

This introduction of the French in the history of the pear in the New World, brings us to a discussion of the part they took in bringing this fruit to America. The debt to France for early horticulture in America rests largely on tradition, but in the case of the pear, there are such substantial proofs of it in ancient pear-trees of enormous size found on the sites of old French settlements, that though there are no written records, and even the people and their habitations have disappeared, it is certain that the seeds from which these venerable trees sprang were planted by early French explorers or missionaries. The first plantings of pears made by the French were in Canada. History and tradition, substantiated by ancient trees, make certain that this fruit was planted by the first French settlers in Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, in favored situations bordering on the St. Lawrence, and on the islands in this river, notably the Island of Montreal. Later plantations of fruit were set in the Niagara region and along the Detroit river. No new varieties seem to have come from these early plantings in Canada, but they demonstrated that pear-growing was possible.

The history of the pear in America cannot be written without making note of the magnificent specimens of this fruit standing until recent years—a few may still be found—about the old French settlements in Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois. These are offspring of seeds brought from France. A century ago the French habitants in Detroit had a tradition as to the manner in which these pears were introduced. The legend ran that an emigrant from France brought three pear seeds in his vest pocket, which, planted on the banks of the Detroit river, became the parents through suckers and seeds of the gigantic old pear-trees that have long been such striking landmarks of the towns and farms on the Detroit river. No doubt these trees are the remains of orchards in which there were apples, and possibly some plums and cherries, of which the shorter-lived trees long since disappeared, while the pears, flourishing in a green old age, are the sole remaining relics of the old French settlements of this region. The writer herewith puts on record another account of these truly remarkable pears as he saw them in 1899.

All of these ancient French pears are of the same type, but the fruits vary slightly, indicating that the trees were grown from seeds, although some may have come from sprouts since many of the trees throw out sprouts abundantly. The pears are of medium size, usually turbinate, and lemon-yellow is the predominating color. The ripening season runs from late summer to early winter. The flesh is melting, juicy, usually mildly sweet, spicy, not high in quality for dessert but excellent for all culinary purposes. But the most remarkable characters of these French pears are the great size of the trees and their vigor, healthfulness, productiveness, and longevity. The trees have the majestic port of a century-old elm or oak. They attain a height of eighty feet; a girt of eight or ten feet is not uncommon, while one monarch measured by the writer fell a few inches short of eleven feet in circumference three feet from the ground. The leaves are small but abundant, and are of the luxuriant green color that betokens great vigor. The trees have attained immunity to blight, but the fruits are inviting prey to codling-moth when that insect is rife. In these rich river-bottom lands the trees almost annually load themselves with fruit, a crop of from forty to fifty bushels on one tree not being uncommon. No one knows the age of most of these ancient lichen-covered giants, although one which stood until a few years ago was known to have been planted within the pickets of the palisaded fortress of Detroit in 1705.

A generation or two ago, these French pears were very common about the French settlements of Michigan and Canada in this region but they have been disappearing fast, until it is doubtful if any of those set by French habitants can be found now. The pears possessed no commercial value, and were replaced by named varieties better known by fruit-growers and nurserymen. It is doubtful if the trees of the newcomers will ever attain the age, size, vigor, and productiveness of these oldtimers of the French, characters which make them noteworthy in the history of the pear in America.

Pear-trees of enormous size survive on other sites of old French settlements in the United States to show what notable horticulturists the early missionaries of this people were, who, we are many times told in the early records, usually surrounded their missions and homes with trees of the apple, peach, pear, and cherry. Pear-trees very like those found about the French settlements in Canada and Michigan still grow in the rich intervale lands of the Wabash and Mississippi in Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. Vincennes, Indiana, was settled by the French in 1702; Kaskaskia and Cahokia, Illinois, about 1685; St. Louis, Missouri, in 1764. These may be set down as approximate dates in which horticulture began in these inland regions. When the English conquered these settlements they found giant pear-trees which persisted well into the last century, the second generation of which were scattered far and wide in the river settlements of this region. Tradition says that a Monsieur Girardin, a native of France, planted a pear orchard from seeds he brought with him at Cahokia about 1780, from which came the Prairie du Pont pear, a small, roundish, lemon-colored fruit similar to the French pears of Detroit, borne on an immense blight-proof tree. No doubt the variety could still be found in this part of the Mississippi valley. One wishes that the American-born descendants and the conquerers of these early settlers from Normandy were as energetic in forwarding horticulture as the first settlers. After the invasion of the English and later the Americans, there is little evidence of progress in horticulture in this region, until the early years of the nineteenth century.

Another famous pear-tree of the Middle West is worthy of notice as an evidence of early interest in horticulture. This tree, known as the Ockletree pear, from the name of its owner, has acquired fame as the largest pear-tree of which there is record. The tree was a seedling brought from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1804, and was planted in an orchard at Vincennes, Indiana. It bore a number of record-breaking crops, the largest of which was 140 bushels of pears borne in 1837. In 1855, the trunk measured ten and one-half feet in circumference at the smallest place below the limbs; the top was estimated to have a spread of 75 feet. The tree gained its great port and productiveness from spread of branch rather than height, which was estimated to be only 65 feet. The variety was unknown, but the fruit was said to be somewhat inferior in quality. This monarch of its species was struck by a tornado in 1867 which stripped off its branches and caused the death of the tree a few years later.

Another living monument marked the beginnings of pear-culture in America until 1866, when the trunk, little more than a shell, was broken down by a dray, having furnished shade and shelter in a New York garden for 220 years. This garden was laid out by the redoubtable Peter Stuyvesant who took the reins of government in New Amsterdam in 1647, at which time this pear-tree was planted. The pear was a Summer Bon Chrétien, said to have been imported from Holland in a tub. Stuyvesant’s garden, kept in a high state of cultivation by forty or fifty negro slaves, was called the “Bouwery,” now the Bowery, and the pear-tree in it stood at what is now the corner of Third Avenue and Thirteenth Street. No doubt other pears were imported from Holland at the same time, and from these and seeds and sprouts, this fruit was started in the Dutch settlements up and down the Hudson, where the pear even to this day is a favorite fruit, finding here a more congenial soil and climate than in any other part of America.

Soon after Governor Stuyvesant planted his bowery of fruits, flowers, and vegetables, the French laid out orchards in the vicinity of New York City. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, many Huguenots fled to America. In 1689, some of these French emigrés settled at New Rochelle, New York, and on Long Island. The trees grown by the Huguenots were usually grafted, the parent plants having been brought from France. No doubt, it was from these importations that White Doyenné, Brown Beurré, St. Germain, Virgouleuse, and many other old French sorts that seem to have been in America from time immemorial came.

However, the pear, in common with other fruits, was more largely grown from seeds in these pioneer days than from buds or grafts. Fruits were known and grown as species and not as varieties almost wholly in America until the nineteenth century. The sale of budded or grafted trees began in New York, so far as records show, with the establishment of a nursery at Flushing, Long Island, in 1730, by Robert Prince. This nursery afterwards became the famous Linnaean Botanic Garden. At what date Prince began to offer grafted pears for sale cannot now be ascertained, but advertisements appearing in 1767, 1771, and 1790 offer named varieties at these dates. The following is a list of pears offered by the Princes in 1771:[11]

Bergamot	Russelet
Catharine	Early sugar
Vergalieu	Baurre vert
July	Winter baurre
Monsier Jean	Baurre de roy
Trom valette	Green chissel
French primative	Swan’s egg
Winter bon cretan	Colmar
Easter bergamot	Cressan
Amber	Spanish bon cretan
Chaumontelle	Large bell
Citron de camis	La Chassaire
Summer bergamot	Hampden’s bergamot
Autumn bergamot	Doctor Uvedale’s St. Germain
Amozelle	Large winter, weighs near two pounds
Lent St. Germain	Pear wardens
Brocaus bergamot	Empress
Winter bergamot	Large summer baking
Jargonelle	The black pear of Worcester or Parkinson’s warden
Roussilon	The skinless
Cuissemadam	Green catharine

Coincident with the establishment of nurseries selling named varieties of pears another event of prime importance to pear-growers occurred. Pear-blight became epidemic in the orchards along the Hudson, and while it must have been noticed before, its ravages at this time brought it prominently to the attention of pear-growers. The disease seems to have been first mentioned by William Denning who described it in the Transactions of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture for 1794 (pt. 2, p. 219) in an article on the decay of apple-trees. Denning says that he first saw the malady in orchards on the highlands of the Hudson in 1780 attacking apples, pears, and quinces. He gives a good description of the disease, but says it is caused by a borer in the trunk which he found after much labor. From Denning’s discovery until Burrill a hundred years later, in 1882, discovered a cause of the disease and suggested a preventive, every treatise on the pear speculates on the cause and cure of pear-blight, a disease which has been and is the terror and despair of growers of this fruit.

Philadelphia was another center of pear-growing in the early settlements of the country. The Quakers, settling in Pennsylvania in 1682, planted all of the hardy fruits; which were soon, as we are several times told, a great asset to the colony. No results worthy of note seem to have come from these early plantings until nearly a half century later when John Bartram[12] founded, in 1728, what became a famous botanic garden. The Bartram Botanic Garden became almost at once the clearing house for native and foreign fruits and plants, and to it came several varieties of pears for distribution throughout the colonies. Here, the first variety of the pear to originate in America of which we have definite record, came into existence. This was the Petre pear raised by Bartram, from seeds sent him from England by Lady Petre. The seed was planted in 1735 near the stone house which Bartram built with his own hands. The tree still stands, somewhat stricken with its two centuries, but withal a noble specimen seemingly capable of breasting the blows of age for many years to come.

The pear industry of the eastern United States is confined to the regions in which the history of this fruit has been traced, and most if not all of the varieties that originated in this country until the middle of the nineteenth century came from the importations to these French, Dutch, and English settlements. There is little profit, therefore, in attempting to trace further the history of pear-culture on the Atlantic seaboard in colonial times. Pears were grown in the states south of Pennsylvania, for many references are found in the colonial records of the southern states, but they bring out no new facts to illuminate the history of this fruit in America. The Quakers and Swedes grew pears in the regions watered by the Delaware, and the English in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina all planted pears with the other hardy fruits only to find that they so quickly succumbed to unfavorable climate and the blight as to be unprofitable. The Bergamy and Warden, in particular, are mentioned as varieties of this fruit grown in the colonial period of the southern colonies.

Perhaps one, at least, of these lesser centers of pear-growing somewhat to the south of the pear regions in which there are now commercial plantations should receive notice. In 1794, William Coxe,[13] Burlington, New Jersey, began planting experimental orchards. Coxe was acquainted with the leading pomologists of Europe and his own country, and collected the best varieties of tree-fruits to be found in the United States, England, and France. In 1817, he published his View of the Cultivation of Fruit Trees, and the Management of Orchards and Cider, etc., the first American book on pomology. This pioneer pomologist described 65 varieties of pears, most of which he had grown at one time or another on his own place, and names 21 other sorts that were grown in his and neighboring states. Coxe seems to have been the first nurseryman to import new varieties from the Old World. To Coxe, more than to any other one man, the regions adjacent to the Delaware are indebted for the early development of fruit-growing both for pleasure and profit, and the whole country is indebted to him for the introduction of many fine fruits.

A new phase in the history of the pear began soon after the Revolutionary war. Until this time, and until well into the next century, tree-fruits were nearly all seedlings. The pears of the country until as late as 1830 were for most part seedlings, the fruits varying greatly in size, shape, color, and flavor. According to the accounts of the times, the product was so hard of flesh and so astringent in flavor as to be fit only for cooking and perry. Indeed, the great object in growing apples, pears, and peaches was the making of cider, perry, and peach-brandy. Good eating pears were few indeed. But beginning in a small way with Coxe in New Jersey, as noted, a little later with William Kenrick, Newton, Massachusetts, and still later with Robert Manning, Salem, Massachusetts, the importation of European varieties of fruits became an important part of the nursery business. The importation of pears became an obsession with Manning, his nursery alone importing several hundred varieties. Manning’s work must have a more extended notice.

In 1823, Robert Manning established a pomological garden at Salem, Massachusetts, to collect and test as many varieties of fruits as he could obtain, native and foreign, with the intention of propagating and distributing those which proved most worthy. In furthering this great project he entered into correspondence with the leading pomologists of Europe, and from them secured trees and cions, which, with native sorts, brought his collection up to 2000 varieties of fruits at the time of his death in 1842. More than half of the varieties planted by Manning were pears. This, it will be remembered, was the period in which Belgian, French, and English pomologists were making pears a specialty, and led by Van Mons, the Belgian scientist, had succeeded in putting almost a new pear flora in the hands of fruit-growers. Manning grew in America nearly all of Van Mons’ introductions, received direct from the originator, and many acquisitions from other European pomologists as well, notably many varieties from Robert Thompson of the London Horticultural Society. Manning was one of the most careful observers amongst American pomologists, and to him pear-growers are indebted for the first full and accurate descriptions of the fruits grown in his time in this country. These were published in 1838 in his Book of Fruits. American pomologies before and many since were compilations. Manning made his descriptions first-hand and described no fruit “not actually identified beyond a reasonable doubt of its genuineness.”

After Manning, one might well scan the work of several eminent American pomologists who made pears a specialty. Robert Manning, Jr., continued the work of his father with this fruit and the two Downings, Wilder, Barry, and Thomson found the pear the most interesting of the fruits which they grew. To all of these men, pomologists are indebted for the introduction of many new and choice pears; for the identification of varieties; for the correction of the nomenclature of this fruit; for testing hundreds of seedlings and native and foreign varieties; and for the distribution of pears throughout the whole country.

A history of the pear in America requires some mention of its introduction in the Pacific states since that region is now the greatest center of the pear industry in the country, and the home of several notable varieties. Franciscan monks established missions in California at about the time the colonies on the eastern coast were fighting for their independence. To these they brought the cultivated plants of Europe and among them the pear. Vancouver, in 1792, found all of the hardy fruits growing at Santa Clara and the mission of San Buena Ventura, California. Robinson, a little later, describes extensive orchards connected with the mission of San Gabriel in which there were pears in abundance. In 1846, Edwin Bryant found at the mission of San Jose six hundred pear-trees bearing fruit in great abundance and full perfection. The missions were secularized in 1834, and the orchards fell into decay. But the pear and the vine withstood neglect, drouth, and the browsing of cattle to furnish food to the Argonauts of ’49. But little came of these early plantings that affects the present industry of growing pears in California either as to methods of culture or the introduction of new varieties.

As an example of the remarkable recuperative power of the pear, however, the orchard which Bryant described in 1846 at the San Gabriel Mission is noteworthy. An enterprising pioneer, W. M. Stockton, grafted over the old orchard in 1854 to improved varieties, and by pruning, cultivation, and irrigation succeeded in rejuvenating it so that the orchard became a profitable commercial plantation—the first commercial pear orchard in California. There are other instances given in the early accounts of fruit-growing in California in which the youth of old pear-trees was renewed by generous treatment, showing that the pear in a congenial soil and climate is most self-assertive in maintaining life. It could hardly be otherwise than that the health and vigor of these old trees stimulated the planting of fruits by the gold-seekers who rushed to this region in 1849.

Meanwhile, orcharding had been established as an avocation. In the rich Willamette Valley in Oregon, where the growing of wheat and cattle was the vocation, the plantations of hardy fruits made by Henderson Lewelling, near Portland, Oregon, in 1847, included pears and marked the beginning of pear-culture in Oregon. Lewelling’s venture, so pregnant with results in pomology for the Pacific Northwest, has been described in The Cherries of New York, and needs no detailed description here. It is mentioned only to call attention to it as another landmark in the history of the pear.

The padres began the cultivation of the pear at the missions. The pioneers of ’47 in Oregon and ’49 in California started a new era in the cultivation of this and other tree-fruits by introducing named and improved varieties and extending their cultivation along the coast from British Columbia to Lower California. So far, the plantings were fruit gardens, not orchards. The era of commercial fruit-growing began in the year 1869 in which the first fresh fruits were sent east by rail, the shipment amounting to thirty-three tons, mostly pears and apples. This event marks the beginning of a great industry in growing pears on the Pacific slope for the fresh fruit market, and was followed shortly by the introduction of canning and evaporation to use up the surplus product. The special demands of these three more or less distinct industries called for new varieties, and American pomology has been enriched by a score or more varieties of pears from this great pear region.

An event which has had a profound influence on pear-growing in the whole country was the introduction of Oriental pears and their hybrids. The mongrel offspring of the Oriental with the European pear were unfortunate in regions where pure-bred European sorts can be grown, but in vast tracts of the United States, as almost the whole of the South and the Middle West, only hybrids of the two species find a congenial environment, and here varieties with Oriental blood became a great asset. The introduction of these pears, also, has greatly stimulated the canning of this fruit in regions where fruit-preserving is an industry. It was hoped that these hybrids could be used successfully as stocks upon which European varieties could be worked, but the stocks have not proved satisfactory, and their use is decreasing.

The Oriental, Chinese, or Sand pear came into America from Asia by the way of Europe. The importation into Europe was made by the Royal Horticultural Society of London in 1820. There seems to be no record of when these pears reached America, but they were growing in the Prince Nursery as early as 1840 under the names Chinese pear and Sha Lea. Here, or in one of several nurseries to which it was sent by Prince, the Oriental seems to have hybridized with the European pear, the product being the Le Conte, which came to notice in 1846 and is the first of these hybrids on record. The Kieffer fruited first in 1873 and proved to be much better than Le Conte except in certain parts of the South. The Garber, another valuable hybrid, came to notice about 1880. There are now, perhaps, two score of these hybrids, with new ones coming from time to time. These hybrid pears, while not blight-proof, are more immune to blight than the European varieties, and pear-breeders are hybridizing the two species with the hope of obtaining a variety with the fruit of the European type on a tree of the Oriental type. Several promising seedlings bred with this combination in view have been announced, and the number of these hybrids is certain to be increased as time goes on.

The advent of Russian pears in the United States must also be mentioned as a notable event in the history of this fruit. Russian pears are hardy strains of Pyrus communis grown from time immemorial in Russia. The fruits of these Russian varieties are low in quality, but the trees are much hardier than those of strains coming from more southern parts of Europe. Some seventy or eighty of these hardy pears have been imported from Russia, the first shipment coming in 1879 from St. Petersburg. For a few years importations followed rapidly, and fruit-growers in cold regions had high hopes of being able to grow pears in competition with growers in more favored regions. The fruits turned out to be so poor in quality and the trees so subject to blight, however, that the cultivation of all but a few varieties has ceased. Of the whole number, Bessemianka, possibly, is the only one worthy of comparison with the pears of southern Europe, and this sort is rated as poor where the southern pears are grown. Professor J. L. Budd,[14] Ames, Iowa, and Charles Gibb, Montreal, Canada, were the two men most instrumental in bringing these pears to America.

The chief import of these brief records of the origin and history of cultivated pears in several countries is to show the evolution of this fruit. It is hoped that the chapter will furnish inspiration for further amelioration of the pear, and that it contains facts that will be helpful in the future development of this fruit. The men, times, and places have historical and narrative interest to pomologists; but these are quite secondary to the knowledge of what the raw material was from which our pear flora has been fashioned, and the methods of domestication that were employed. This chapter is only a sketch—the briefest possible outline of how the leading types of pears came to be, and how and when they came to America.