EFFORTS TO INCREASE FOOD RESOURCES 



A schoolmaster by the name of Stair went strolling 

 around the countryside in England about a century ago 

 and came upon a pear tree that attracted his attention on 

 account of its handsome crop of smooth, bright yellow- 

 fruit. How this tree came to be where it was, nobody knew. 

 Perhaps a squirrel on his way to his cache had dropped a 

 seed, or a boy may have thrown a core over the fence. 

 Anyway, there it was, uncultivated and unpruned, its 

 branches lopped by grazing livestock; yet it bore fruit 

 so sweet and tender that Stair decided it was worth culti- 

 vating. At the proper time scions were cut and grafted 

 into his orchard. In a few years these bore fruit. The atten- 

 tion of a neighboring nurseryman was drawn to this new 

 pear. His name was William. Soon the new variety, known 

 as the Williams pear, was distributed over the British 

 Islands wherever pears were grown. 



French and Belgian nurserymen were keenly interested 

 in pears, but thought that another name would be more 

 suitable; so when the Williams pear crossed the channel, 

 it was renamed Le Bon Chretien, and by this name it is 

 now well known in Europe and Australia. Sooner or later 

 such a good fruit was sure to come to America but, by 

 the compensation of fate, its French name was lost on 

 the way. It did so well in a garden at Roxbury, Mas- 

 sachusetts, that a man by the name of Bartlett, who had 

 bought the place, thought that it should be made generally 

 available; and, as he was not averse to having his own 

 name attached to such a good fruit, this pear has since 

 been known everywhere in the United States as the Bartlett. 

 The trainloads of canned pears from California are mostly 

 Bartletts, and four out of every five boxes sold on the fruit 

 stand are from trees that are lineal descendants by vegeta- 

 tive propagation from the original tree that schoolmaster 

 Stair found so long ago in England. 



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