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The early cultivation of the pear especially is of great antiquity, and, not 
too insist too strongly on the correctness of old Pomological writers, who can trace, 
they say, no less than 20 varieties, as mentioned by Pliny, and five or six by 
Virgil, it would appear that the first varieties of both apples and pears were 
introduced into England from the more equal and temperate climate of the con- 
tinent, but at what period, so far as I can learn, is not clearly ascertained. 
Our earliest information of fruits is gathered from fruiterers’ bills, and bills 
of fare of royal and other sumptuous entertainments, and a curious instance is 
placed on record so early as Edward I.’s reign, 1292 (to which I shall allude 
further on). One Harris, a fruiterer, in the reign of Henry VIII., so Evelyn 
tells us, planted 30 towns in Kent with fruit ; and it is hoped, he continues in his 
usual quaint vein, that others would follow Scudamore’s good example (the noble 
introducer, I may here mention, of our French varieties), and plant the best cider 
fruit, till the preference of cider, wholesome and more natural, doth quite vanish 
all other drogues of that nature—a prophecy singularly missing its aim in our day, 
when beer has become one of the estates of the realm—still, also, must time be 
allowed to run its course before the classic verse of Phillipps becomes a prosaic 
fact— 
“That Silurian cyder borne, 
Should place all tastes, and triumph o’er the vine.” 
Tf that stupendous even is ever to take place, most assuredly a very great 
attention must previously have taken place in the management of our trees and 
fruits, for Evelyn’s account of the year of grace 1706 might very easily be substi- 
tuted for the present year 1877 ; or, to again quote hisipsissima verba, ‘‘ There are 
already more persons better provided with Fruit than with Directions to use it as 
they should” when in plentiful years. (I have vividly before me 1875, when in 
my parish hundreds of bushels of fine apples were absorbed into the ground after 
Christmas because they could not find a buyer at 3d. a bushel), when in plentiful 
years, continues Evelyn, so much cider is impaired by ignorant handling and 
becomes dead and sour that many even surfeit with the blessing. It bein ; rarely 
geen in most countries, that any remains good to supply the defects of another 
year. In ascarce and curious tract, headed ‘‘ Herefordshire Orchards, a Pattern 
for all England,” written anonymously, and said by its author to be the first written 
on the subject (I have it published in a Pomological work by Richard Bradley, 
Camb. Professor of Botany, in 1726, or only 20 years after Evelyn wrote his 
Pomona), we read ‘‘ that Herefordshire was reputed as the orchard of ‘England. 
From the greatest persons to the poorest cottager all habitations are encompassed 
with orchards and gardens, and in most places our hedges are enriched with rows 
of fruit trees, pears or apples, gennet moyles, or crab trees.” Of these the writer 
adds en passant :—‘‘ Pears make a weak drink fit only for our hinds, and is 
generally refused by our gentry as breeding wind in the stomack, yet this drink 
(till the heat of summer has caught it) is most pleasant to the female palate, 
having a relish of weak wine mixed with sugar.” (I always thought—I may be 
allowed to add also en passant—that ladies liked their tipple sweet and 
strong, but it seems I am mistaken.) “Few cottagers—yea, very few of our 
a 
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