254 ENGLISH BOTANY. 
little water, peeled and placed on dishes with the stalks uppermost. In this state a 
kind of syrup rans from them, which must be carefully poured out and set on one 
side ; they are then placed on frames in an oven; and left there for twelve hours, from 
which they are removed and steeped in the syrup sweetened with sugar and brandy : 
this process is repeated four times, and they are then left to dry, and if properly done will 
be of a clear pale-brown colour, with fine half-transparent flesh. They are then arranged 
in boxes, garnished with white paper, and offered for sale. They will remain good for 
three years, but are considered best the first year. 
The mode of making perry is precisely the same as for making cider, which is 
described under the Apple. The Pears should be gathered before they begin to fall, and 
they should be ground as soon as possible, to prevent the slight taste of decomposition 
which is often observable in perry unless very carefully made. Every Pear-tree, when 
fully grown and in good soil, will produce about twenty gallons of perry a year, and 
some in Herefordshire have yielded a hogshead in one season. Pears were considered 
by the Romans to be an antidote to poisonous mushrooms, and we believe that nothing 
is better than a draught of perry after an imprudent feast of that vegetable. Both 
pears and apples contain an acid known to the chemist as malic acid ; it is also present 
in large quantities in the berries of the mountain-ash. This acid is used largely in calico- 
printing operations, especially where a white figure is required on a black ground: it 
is employed to discharge the black colour, which it does without injuring the cloth. 
Recently it has been found that apples and pears contain so much of this malic acid as 
to make them valuable chemical agents, and it is feared by the lovers of cider and perry 
that the price given for them for this purpose may diminish the quantity of these 
favourite beverages, 
With regard to the practical cultivation of the Pear-tree, we are told that a dry 
deep loam is the best soil for it. Gravel is a good subsoil where the incumbent mould 
is suitable. For wall trees the soil should be made good to the depth of two or three 
feet ; for orchard trees eighteen inches may do. Pear-trees on their own stocks will thrive 
on soil where apples will not even live, supposing the plants to be hardy varieties, little 
removed from wild pears, and to have room to grow freely as standards. Mr. Knight's 
mode of training a Pear-tree is as follows :— 
“A young pear stock, which had two lateral branches upon each re and was 
about six feet high, was planted against a wall early in the spring of 1810, and it was 
grafted in each of its lateral branches, two of which sprang out of the stem about four 
feet from the ground, and others at the summit in the following year. The shoots 
these grafts produced were about a foot long, were trained downwards, the undermost 
nearly perpendicular, and the uppermost just below the horizontal line, placing them 
at such distances that the leaves of one shoot did not at all shade those of another. 
In the next year the same mode of training was continued, and the year following I 
obtained an abundant crop of fruit.” 
The wood of the Pear-tree is heavy, strong, compact, and of a fine grain slightly 
tinged with red. It is readily stained black, and then so closely resembles ebony as 
scarcely to be distinguishable from it. It is a good wood for many purposes in the arts, 
and is an excellent fuel. 
The oldest Pear-trees in the neighbourhood of London are at Twickenham, where 
they may be seen from fifty to sixty feet high, and with trunks from eighteen inches to 
three feet in diameter, and in all probability came from the nursery of Master Richard 
-Pointer, Gerarde’s “ curious and cunning graffer.”. In Herefordshire there stood in the 
year 1805 a tree which more than once filled fifteen hogsheads of perry in the same 
<n 7.7 
——— ae 
VV". 
