180 ff hat a 2>}ffere7ice. 



California Seedling Pears. 



AT a meeting of the Western New York Horticultural Society, last winter, Presi- 

 dent Barry acknowledged the receipt of several varieties of seedling pears, ori- 

 ginated in California, and of which he said : 



" In the month of November last, I received twenty-six varieties of seedling pears, 

 raised by Mr. Bernard S. Fox of San Jose, Cal. Their appearance astonished me. 

 Many of them were so much like some of our old, well-known sorts, that I half sus- 

 pected my friend Fox of playing a joke on me. There were Bloodgood, Seckel, 

 Lawrence, Winter Nellis, Beurre Clairgeau, Beurre Bosc, Eastern Beurre, Duchesse 

 d'Angouleme, Beurre Superfine, Glout Morceau, and others. 



" Some friends, very good judges, to whom I sent specimens, had the same doubt 

 in regard to their being seedlings. When I began to examine them closely, and cut 

 them, I found they were quite distinct from the sorts they resembled, and were posi- 

 tively new. I then wrote to Mr, Fox for some account of their origin, and he an- 

 swered that they all sprung from the seed of the Belle Lucrative, sown in 1863, and 

 had fruited in the rows where they had first grown. 



" Some bore the fifth year, and the sixth over 200 bore fruit. One-fourth of the 

 trees have not yet fruited, and for five years to come new fruits may be expected. 

 Many of these varieties are fully equal in size and beauty to our best, and many have 

 the advantage of being quite late. Generally speaking, they are deficient in vinous 

 flavor, like the Eastern Beurre and others of that class. Only one or two were 

 slightly vinous ; but some were justly entitled to rank as best. A few of the largest 

 appeared to be of inferior quality ; one specimen of these, resembling Nouveau Poi- 

 teau in 1871, weighed two and one-half pounds. 



" This is, beyond doubt, the most remarkable instance of success in raising seed- 

 ling pears on record. And the fact that all are from seed of Belle Lucrative, and 

 none like that variety, but like all the others growing around, is both curious and 

 interesting, showing that the mother plant did not affect the character of the varie- 

 ties. This might not have been the case had some other varieties supplied the seed. 

 Much of this success is, no doubt, due to the peculiar climate of California. The 

 early age of which these trees begin to bear, even in the seed-bed, seems strange to 

 us. Mr. Fox wrote me he could have sent eighty varieties the past season. 



" We may now cease looking to the Old World for new varieties of pears, and turn 

 our attention to the Pacific coast. Mr. Fox has already raised pears superior to nine- 

 tenths of the new varieties received from Europe in twenty years. And we shall not 

 only get new varieties from the Pacific coast, but we must expect to see our markets 

 filled with their pears. The supply from that source is already large." 



What a Difference. — With the mercury running down in these " diggins " 

 (Des Moines) 15 to 25 below zero, in came the following note from Brenham, 

 Texas, under date of January 20. " Quince cuttings put out about one month ago, 

 have now roots two inches long, and rose cuttings about the same. Hyacinths, 

 crocus, etc., are coming out, and still we are having a hard cold winter for Texas. 

 How will this compare with Iowa ? " 



