THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



141 



HARDY PEARS. 



Prof. Bad:l, of the Iowa Agriciiltm-al 

 College, who lately visited Russia, 

 writes thus to the Prairie Farmer : 



The pear is not native to this conti- 

 nent and the race with which we have 

 measui-ably failed is native to the west 

 c©ast of Europe, where the climate is 

 modified by the Gulf stream precisely 

 as is the west coast of the Uniced 

 States. 



In Western Poland the Flemish 

 Beauty is much grown under the name 

 of Belle of Flandei"s, with many other 

 varieties of this grade of hardiness 

 which we have not yet tried. 



In Eastern Poland, and over the 

 great plain north of the Carpathians to 

 Kiev, in Russia, and Proskau, in Silesia, 

 the Flemish Beauty utterly fails, but 

 many vai'ieties of excellent pears are 

 grown that are hardier in tree, and with 

 foliage that can bear greater extremes 

 of summer heat and aridity and 

 moisture of air. One of the least hardy 

 of this family is the Bezi de la Motte. 

 which has come to us as a stray and is 

 worthy of trial on favourable soils 

 south of the 42nd parallel. 



Stiil east and north of Kiev, to 

 Koursk, in Russia, we find the wild 

 pear coming in as a forest tree, and we 

 find in orchard many varieties of the 

 Bergamot and Grucha type of tree and 

 fruit not before seen, excepting the Red 

 Bergamot and Besseraianka which were 

 common with peasants in Eastern 

 Poland. 



East and north of Koursk on the 

 interminable black prairie to Tula, Oriel, 

 and Veronesh, we still find healthy and 

 fruitful pear trees, showing in tree a 

 cross with the indigenous pears, but as 

 commonly grown by the peasants they 

 run more to varieties for culinaiy use 

 than dessert, yet on the grounds of 

 large proprietors, and in the experi- 

 mental orchards of the pomological 



schools, we found from fair to good 

 dessert pears growing on trees showing 

 liltle if any signs of injury from ex- 

 tremes of summer and winter tempera- 

 ture, more severe than we ever expe- 

 I'ience in Central Illinois or Iowa. 



Still east and north, on the west bank 

 of the Volga, at Simbrisk, wo saw 

 more cooking pears going to waste than 

 we had seen during a life-time at all 

 other points Yet as a rule the pears 

 grown here are on the seedlings and the 

 surplus going to waste was too low in 

 grade for sending to a distant market. 

 Yet some of the seedlings and all of 

 the grafted varieties found on the 

 grounds of systematic cultivators and 

 amateurs, we would call very valuable 

 for either culinary or dessert use. yet 

 this point is on the o-ttji parallel of 

 north latitude, and perhaps 1,200 miles 

 inland from the Baltic. The prevailing 

 southeast wind at this point is hotter 

 and drier than we ever know, and 45 

 deg. below in winter, without snow, is 

 by no means unusual. 



North of this point, and six hundred 

 miles east of Moscow, we still found 

 the cooking pears hardy enough to 

 permit their use for street trees, and 

 some of the Bergamots and Gruehas 

 were better than some of the Califoi'uia 

 pears I have tried to eat. At the 

 extreme northern point, where the pear 

 may be profitably grown on the upper 

 Volga, the annual rainfall is as light as 

 in \yestern Dakota, and the winters 

 are too severe for any of the Borovinca 

 race of apples to which our Dachess 

 belongs, and our Box Elder freezes down 

 each winter in the botanical garden at 

 Kazan. 



Agricultural Review, a magazine 

 of American industries, is published 

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