142 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



SuDDUTH, after whom the pear is named. The seed was planted in 1820, 

 making the tree 74 years old, or two years younger than the state of Illi- 

 nois. It is growing in rich, deep, black prairie soil. Mr. Knights and 

 I measured it with a long tape line and found it to be ten feet in diameter 

 four feet from the ground. A little higher, where the limbs start out to 

 make the head, it measured fourteen feet. The head of the tree is about 

 eight feet high and consists of six branches and one main stem. The 

 smallest branch measures three feet four inches around. The tree bore 

 this year about thirty bushels of pears. This being an off year, it was 

 not a full crop. It has borne eighty bushels in one season. Mr. 

 Knights showed me two trees on his own farm that he knew to be fifty-two 

 years old. One measured seven and one half feet, four feet from the 

 ground. We took a sixteen-foot water-spout and by leaning it against the 

 tree estimated the tree to be about sixty feet high. The tenant on the 

 farm said that the tree bore from twenty-five to thirty bushels the past 

 season of good fruit. He had known the trees for fifteen years and had 

 never known them to fail. 



On the farm of J. W. Yogum is a row of five trees, set in the edge of 

 an apple orchard. The trees varied in size from eight feet seven inches 

 to nine feet in circumference. Mr. YocuM told me he was forty years 

 old and that his father planted the trees before he could remember, in 

 1836 or 1838, making them at least 55 years old. The fruit ripens in 

 September, and this year the five trees bore at least 150 bushels. They 

 have borne every year as far back as he could remember. On the farm of 

 Jno. R. Jones there were formerly two trees. One was blown down four 

 years ago. The remaining one is about 49 years old. Comparing it to 

 Mr. Jones' house, standing a few feet away, we estimate the tree to be 

 sixty feet high. He had owned the farm since i860 and the tree had 

 borne every year since. In Mr. Sddduth's garden are seven trees said 

 to be four years planted, one of which measured one foot two inches one 

 foot above the ground, which was certainly a remarkable growth for that 

 age. 



Several limbs had broken from the large trees, years ago, and the stubs 

 not having been removed as they should have been are in a more or less 

 advanced stage of decay. On the body of one of the small trees was a 

 dark spot somewhat resembling blight, but possibly caused by an accident. 

 With these exceptions, I found no disease, decay, or blight on any of 

 these trees. 



I talked with five men who owned land on which the trees are now 

 growing, or tenants who cultivated the land and have a share in the fruit, 

 all of whom stated that they had known the trees from fifteen to forty 

 years and all agreed on the following points: The great age of the trees, 

 their freedom from blight, their habit of annual bearing, and the good 

 quality of the fruit. 



I examined the trees December 15, 1894, 



T. E. Goodrich, Cobden, 111., 

 President of State Horticultural Society. 



I first knew this wonderful pear tree in 1835, the seed of which was 

 brought from Xenia, Ohio, and planted in 1820 by Mr. Tnos. Constant, 

 who entered the land from the government. Later on, about 1845, 

 the size of the tree, its heavy bearing qualitv, as well as the superior 

 quality of the fruit, attracted so much attention among the old settlers 



