NOTES ON PEARS. 



This view of the effects of age on plants, I hope to be able to investigate experimentally; 

 in the mean time, I am desirous that the thoughts which have occurred to me on the sub- 

 ject, should find a place in your Journal. Respectfully yours. John Townlet. 



Moundville, Marquette County, Wis., Dec. 30. 



NOTES ON PEARS. 



BY LEWIS F. ALLEN, BLACK-ROCK, N. Y. 



There has probably never been a single species of fruit, which, in all its varieties, has 

 attracted so large a share of attention in the same space of time, and absorbed so large a 

 monied investment within that time, in the northern half of the United States, as the 

 Pear; and I must be permitted to say, so far, with doubtful results. Within the last ten 

 years, thousands of acres, in garden, lawn, and orchard, have been planted, and hundreds 

 of thousands of trees have been transferred to these plantations. France, Belgium, Ger- 

 many, and England, have contributed to them. Our own nurseries have been ransacked, 

 and now and then one rooted out of pears altogether, to supply the demand; and nurse- 

 rymen themselves, have gone into pear propagation with a furor little short of the multi- 

 caulis mania of 1838, 9 and '40. 



Yet the pear mania — if mania, a new-born zeal in the cultivation of one of the choicest 

 and best fruits with which a kind Providence has blessed us, may be called — is a sensible 

 mania; and under ordinary circumstances, would confer much luxury and enjoyment on 

 our people. Yet there is one difficulty which it m^y be feared is like to dampen much of 

 the ardor of those who have gone into its cultivation, and in many cases, to even extin- 

 guish not onl}"- their ardor and their hopes of pleasure and profit, but the very trees them- 

 selves, which have been the objects of so much expense, labor, and solicitude. 



This difficulty is the summer blight, which is scattered all over our pear producing coun- 

 try; lighting here and there, as caprice, accident or soil; cultivation, locality or variety, 

 may attract it, and scourging and destroying the trees, without regard to the most patient 

 and watchful attempts of the cultivator to avoid its presence, or prevent its ravages. It 

 would be a subject of painful, j'et somewhat satisfactory interest, if, in answer to a gene- 

 ral circular addressed to every fruit-grower in the country, asking the result of his labors 

 for the last ten years, each one would give a correct account of his success, and his mode 

 of treatment of his trees, and of their present condition and prospects. It is to be feared 

 that the balance of profit and loss would stand altogether on the wrong side of the ledger, 

 and chiefl}' from the effects of the blight. And the worst of the matter is, that the cause 

 and origin of the disease is as yet, altogether beyond our comprehension, and its cure past 

 all our ingenuity. The causes of the cholera and the potato disease, are not more inscru- 

 table, nor their remed}' any easier of solution. Hundreds of pages have been written upon 

 the "pear blight," its causes, its prevention, its cure; and it stands just where it has al- 

 waj-^s stood, a terror to the cultivator, and a certain scourge to his hopes. Although thus 

 far, in my own small efforts, happily relieved from its ravages, I hope, with fear and tremb- 

 ling, that my young trees just budding into fruitfulness, are not to be assailed; still, I 

 shall not be susprised to see half of my trees stricken down by the destroyer, before 

 another fall of the leaf. 



the month of August last, a gentleman residing in the valley of the Mohawk, pai 

 mainly to look at my pear trees, and to examine the soil and position where they 



