I fiSi). 



A XD noiriKJUL Ti'j.'isr 



181 



Coffee Culture in Liberia.— That a man 



is not re2;artled as a prophet in his own country, 

 often has apt iUnstrations. In our country, Mr. 

 Ed. S. Morris has not been wholly overlooked 

 in connection with the industrial developement 

 of Africa, but his work is probably more appre- 

 ciated in Europe than it is here among his own 

 friends. The discovery of the Liberian coffee, 

 and its adaptation to Liberia, 

 was not only his work, but the 

 extensive culture in that country 

 by which a degraded and poverty 

 stricken race is elevating itself 

 commercially, and, as always fol- 

 lows in the wake of industrial pur- 

 suits, intellectually and morally, 

 is in a great measure his work 

 only. 



In a work published by Mr. 

 Morris, written as an appeal for 

 means to educate the wild Afri- 

 cans around the Colony of Libe- 

 ria, we find the following sketch 

 of a negro boy, who is offering a 

 present of two leopard kittens, 

 which he had caught wild in the 

 African woods ; all he had to be- 

 stow. Now, as a civilized indus- 

 trial, he feends coffee, sugar, and 

 other products of his civilized la- 

 bor, instead of wild cats, and na- 

 tive beasts. The change is gra- 

 tifying to the whole world. The 

 little Colony of Liberia is doing 

 more to civilize Africa, than all 

 that has been done by other na- 

 tions for ages, and among the 

 many who have worked in this 

 useful field, E. S. Morris should 

 •ever be gratefully remembered. 



Pear Progenitors. — The 

 Florist and Pomologist has the following : " In 

 the course of a series of lectures, published some 

 short time since by the late Prof. Karl Koch, the 

 origin of our various fruits is one of the subjects 

 treated on. The learned and traveled Prof., in 

 these lectures, mentions six species of Pyrus, as 

 the progenitors of our cultivated peax's, namely: 

 Pyrus sinensis, of Desfontaine, from China and 

 Japan ; P. cordata, of Dcsvaux, from France, 

 etc. ; P. Achras, of Gaertner, from the steppes 

 of Southern Russia, and naturalized in France 

 and Germany ; P Sinai, of Desfontaine, from 



Syria; P. elseagrifolia, of Pallas, from north- 

 east Asia Minor; and P. salicifolia of the 

 younger Linnaeus, from the Caucasus. Linnaius 

 united all the Pears, both wild and cultivated, 

 under the name of P. communis, and this name 

 we employ now for the cultivated varieties col- 

 lectively. At Torek, in the northern Caucasus, 

 Pear trees eighty and even a hundred feet high 



are not rare, with trunks three to four feet in 

 diameter. Siebold introduced into the botanic 

 szanlLMi at Leylen, eight varieties of Japanese 

 cultivated Pears, differing widely in size, shape, 

 rtavor. and time of ripening. As a species, P. 

 sinensis is distinguished by its rather large ovate 

 or nearly round leaves, which are abruptly nar- 

 rowed into a short point, and furnished with 

 bristle-pointed teeth ; in the spring, when they 

 unfold, they are of a brownish red. In Ger- 

 many it is planted for ornamental purposes, 

 but it has not yet borne either tlower or fruit. 



