PEAR CULTURE. 



PEAR CULTURE — NO. 3. 



BY DR. J. M. WARD. — NEWARK, N. J. 



The delay of tliis article on the comparative success of the pear on the quince and 

 its own stock, is owing, it must frankly be acknowledged, more to the reluctance 

 we have felt to approach the examination of this subject than to any other cause. 

 We arc well aware that in what we have to say, we shall opi)Ose the honest views 

 of many horticultural friends — amateurs, who have liberally fed and carefully nur- 

 tured their few pet dwarfs until the love they cherish for them is duly propor- 

 tioned to the labor bestowed upon them ; nurserymen and tree-growers, who, 

 believing they were subserving the cause of horticulture, have indorsed by their 

 name and influence the cultivation of the pear on quince, till their successful 

 general culture in their own minds was placed beyond all question. But we must 

 beg them to remember our disparaging remarks, if such they should be called, 

 are the result of the observations of but a solitary individual, made simply in his 

 own fruit orchards ; and should the facts thus given not be corroborated by the 

 testimony of others, they may be set down as anomalous experience, and if not 

 satisfactorily accounted for from mode of culture, climate, or soil, according to the 

 linguist's saying — "exceptio probat regulam," will serve to fortify their cherished 

 opinions on this subject. To render our statements more satisfactory, we shall 

 give the age, size, and height of trees, and in some cases their annual product, 

 not simply trusting to our memories for these data, but appealing to our veritable 

 fruit record, commenced with our first planting, ten years since, and faithfully con- 

 tinued to the present time. 



In Darlington's Memorials of John Bartram will be found a letter bearing date 

 Jan. 1763, from P. Collinson, London, to John Bartram, in which we note the 

 following : " AVhat I am persuaded will prevent the ^^<?ar dropping its fruit, if 

 some quinces were planted in the lower part of this garden near the spring, and 

 graft them with the pear — it meliorates the fruit. By long experience, all our 

 pears are grafted on quince stocks, and succeed better than on pear stocks with 

 us." By which we infer in the moist climate of England, regard being had in 

 planting to the habit of the quince, which delights in moist situations, and espe- 

 cially with their uniformity of climate, results may be obtained, which we are not 

 warranted in looking for in our climate of dry summers with its scorching suns — 

 and severely cold winters with its prevailing north west winds. 



Although this mode of culture was thus flatteringly indorsed in England nearly 

 a century ago, it does not seem to have taken that hold of the public mind that it 

 has in our country. The lamented Downing, in 1845, said : "The dwarf pear, how- 

 ever, it must be confessed, rather belongs to the small garden of the amateur, than 

 to the orchardist, or him who desires to have regular large crops, and long lived 

 trees ; it is usually short lived, seldom enduring more than a dozen years in bcar- 

 ind yet such we find has been the progress of the mania for dwarf trees, in 



