" The great problem I had attempted to solve in my present vocation, was to 

 settle the question whether the cultivation of fruit, and especially of pears, could 

 be made profitable. In doing this, I found it all-important to keep an eye to the 

 expense demanded in the culture of the trees. To attempt to keep an orchard of 

 some five acres in clean culture by any other than horse labor, would demand more 

 of an income than I possessed ; and to cultivate with a horse was utterly imprac- 

 ticable with any other form of the trees than I have given them, viz : that of the 

 half-standard. 



" Amateur cultivators who have only seen pears growing in the nicely dressed 

 specimen rows of the nurseryman, or on pet dwarfs in a garden, will do well to 

 remember, in visiting ray grounds, that I have no garden — my fruit is in orchards. 



" Had I been privileged to accompany the visitor over the orchards, he would 

 have learned that the ' distorted trees' were the quince stocks that I had attempted 

 to grow, and would not, and that they will soon be out of the way ; trees, that 

 with others unsatisfactory in growth, though not misshapen, have led me to say 

 what I have in the articles alluded to, against the general introduction of the 

 quince stock for the growth of the pear. Had the charge been made that the 

 grounds bore evidence of neglect, and portions were overgrown with weeds, I should 

 have been silent, for the greater part of the past summer I have been an invalid 

 and confined to the house, and as I have no gardener, but depend entirely upon 

 the most unintelligent, because the cheapest laborers, being myself the superin- 

 tendent and director, my entire farm soon gave evidence that the proprietor was 

 ' not at home.' 



" My oldest trees on quince stocks were planted, as stated in the articles in the 

 Horticulturist, in 1849 and 1851, the first planted being now seven years old — the 

 speaker at Rochester says twelve — but as that is about as near the truth as a 

 ' visitor,' troubled at articles that had disparaged the dwarf-trees, could possibly 

 approach — we proceed to remark, that the object of all fruit-tree culture is the 

 production of fine fruit. For a number of years past, I have been in the habit of 

 exhibiting the fruit grown on these trees, and others contiguous to them, at differ- 

 ent State and city fairs, and never have I made an exhibition of pears that I have 

 not had a premium awarded them. This year the fruit that was growing when 

 certain gentlemen visited my grounds, was exhibited at the Brooklyn Horticultural 

 Fair, and, by universal judgment, was declared the finest in the exhibition ; the 

 second premium, however, was awarded them, as there were less than forty varie- 

 ties, the first being awarded to a collection of a hundred and fifty varieties, under 

 a call for the greatest and best display. On one of these trees there was also 

 grown a pear that attained to the size of seventeen and three-fourths inches in 

 dimensions, weighing thirty-five and a half ounces. This mammoth pear is now 

 in the hands of the Editor of the Horticulturist, and has been modelled by him. 

 This season's crop of pears has been taken from the trees, and either disposed of, 

 or boxed for family use ; the only variety remaining on the trees is the Vicar of 

 Winkfield. 



" Now, if ' the visitor,' or any other fruit grower, will accept the following 

 challenge, the exhibition may satisfy some at least, that if ' the correspondent in 

 the Horticulturist does not know how to grow quince stocks according to modern 

 treatment,' he knows how to grow pears. I will exhibit in New York City, at 

 any specified time before the first of December, one or five bushels of that variety 

 of pear, in competition with an equal quantity, the growth of the exhibitor — the 

 owner of the best grown, fairest, and largest fruit to be the owner of both. ]Mr. 

 Charles Downing to associate with himself any two fruit growers (not nurserymen) 

 and be the judges of the fruit. I. M. Ward, Neicark, N. 



