THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 15 



pears was stimulated and a veritable craze for this fruit was started 

 everybody planted pears. 



The famous collection of fruits was begun by Le Lectier in 1598. By 

 1628, the infatuation to plant had progressed until Le Lectier could send 

 to his fellow amateurs a catalog of his possessions of fruits with the desire 

 to exchange. His offer to exchange shows all of the collector's zeal. It 

 reads as follows: 



' I beg all those who have good fruits (not contained in the present 

 Catalogue) when he obtains them to inform me of it, so that I can have 

 grafts of them in exchange for those which they have not, but which they 

 wish to get from me, and which I will furnish them. 



' ' Signed, Le Lectier, Attorney of the King at Orleans. 

 2Oth of December, 1628." 



From Le Lectier 's list we learn that 300 years ago the French had at 

 least 254 pears. In this catalog are many pears in the pomologies of today, 

 but, unfortunately without descriptions or any attempt to determine 

 duplicates in names or varieties, the list serves for little more than a 

 monument for one of the first and one of the most zealous collectors of 

 pears. Le Lectier, however, may be said to have introduced the golden 

 age of pomology in France; for, during historical times there seems to 

 have been no other period in which pomology exercised the minds and 

 hands of well-to-do people as in the century that followed Le Lectier. 

 Even the kings of France took pleasure in using the spade and the pruning- 

 knife. La Quintinye, the best of the pomological writers of the day, 

 complained that the country was overwhelmed with books on pomology. 

 Thus, was ushered in the period which we may call our own in which the 

 history of the pear may be read in books innumerable. 



As steps in the progress of the pear, the number of varieties may be 

 noted as given by French pomologists in the modern era of pear-growing. 

 Merlet, 1667, describes 187 varieties; La Quintinye, 1690, 67; Duhamel, 

 1768, 119; the Chartreuse fathers, 1775, 102; Tollard, 1805, 120; Noisette, 

 1833, 238; while Leroy, 1867, from whom the figures just given were taken, 

 says that in the half century preceding, the number of pears in France 

 was quadrupled and that there are 900 varieties for which there are 3000 

 names. Leroy notes three events as the cause of the generous multiplication 

 of pears in the period of which he writes: The introduction of the many 

 varieties grown by Van Mons and other Flemish pomologists beginning 

 about 1805; a little later, the establishment of exchange relations with 



