THE DETROIT RIVER PEAR TREES. 



choky taste of the Avilding, M'hich I have no doubt they are, and are chiefly used for cook- 

 ing, drying and preserves. Some of them are ripe in August, and but few of them last 

 beyond September; and the great majority of the fruit, as I was told, is about the size 

 of those I saw. The oldest person T could find to learn any thing of their age and histo- 

 ry, was an old French woman who Avas born on the farm Avhere I saw her. She did not 

 know her own age exactly, but I gathered from her talk that she was full seventy years 

 old. She informed me that the trees in her orchard were apparently as large as they now 

 are when she was a child; but by whom, or when they were planted, she could give no 

 account. The seeds unquestionably, were brought from France at the first settlement of 

 the country, and in all probability, the trees must be much more than a century, proba- 

 bly a hundred and fifty 3'ears old, and from present appearances they may, with ordinary 

 care, hold on full another hundred years. 



I got a spade and dug on several different farms among the trees, and found the soil rn- 

 variubly a heavy, strong, clayzy loam — 'Some would call it cold and clammy— AigAZy char- 

 ged with lime, and resting on a clay subsoil — an almost dead level, and elevated but a few 

 feet above the river; and although it had been worked ever since, and probably years be- 

 fore the trees were planted, did not appear to be exhausted in its fruit-sustaining proper- 

 ties. This is the predominating soil, both on the Detroit and Niagara rivers, and finer, 

 larger, and more fruitful trees are not to be found, tlian are produced on the banks of these 

 rivers, particularly in the old settlements; and up and down, as they were seen from the 

 water, on both shores of the Detroit river, the old pear and apple trees had the like ap- 

 pearance. Nor had the land been drained at all, that I could discover, but was just in its 

 natural condition. 



Now, whether if these had been ivorked trees of the finer kinds of fruit, they would 

 have lived to this advanced age and great bearing, I am unable to determine. But certain 

 it is, that in hardihood and vigor no fruit trees can excel them. And it is an interesting 

 fact for pomologists to learn, that we have a soil in which the pear will flourish equal to 

 an}^ other tree known — and to those who wish to cultivate this valuable fruit to high per- 

 fection, it is worth while to know that in such a soil — a lime stone, clayey loam — they will 

 thrive successfully, while in a sandy, primitive soil, they certainly are short-lived, and 

 fruit badly, unless effectually fed with lime and ashes. 



An inference or two drawn from the history and position of these ancient trees, may be 

 worth consideration. Is not the stock of the seedling pear hardier and more vigorous 

 than the worked stocks of the more refined and delicate wooded fruits? And if so, is it not 

 the better plan to grow our pears of such seedling stocks up to the branching point, and 

 then work them with the desired varieties.' It so appears to me. 



I am informed by some intelligent cultivators of fruit, natives of Normandy, that in the 

 heavy soils, particularly about Rouen, the pear grows with a luxuriance rarely seen in 

 America, and the now almost imiversal practice among our nurserymen, of importing 

 French seedlings in which to work their pears — thus avoiding the earlj^ leaf blight, so pre- 

 valent among their own seedlings — would seem almost conclusive proof that there is a soil 

 which is almost exclusively adapted to the successful culture of this tree beyond any 

 other. 



Look at the magnificent Virgalieus, or White Doyennes, Avhich grow in such luxuriance 

 and profusion at Canandaigua, Geneva, and all about the interior lake region of western 

 New-York. The soils on which these pears grow, is almost uniformly a heavy clay loam 

 stiff clay sub-soil, highly charged with lime and potash. There is no canker, crack, 

 pot about them; while in some other localities, light, sandy loams, in the same coun- 



