32 THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 



distinct fruit as " apples, pears, quinces, wardens," and even the herbals 

 and early fruit books count them as distinct. Shakespeare's clown in 

 A Winter's Tale says: "I must have saffron to colour the Warden pies." 

 The name came to signify any long-keeping, cooking pear and even yet is 

 so used in parts of England. 



The most noteworthy landmark is found in the discussions of pears by 

 the English herbalists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Turner, 

 the first of these herbalists, in his Herbal of 1551, mentions the pear but 

 without important details, though we may infer from what he says that the 

 pear is now a common fruit. Thomas Tusser, in his Five Hundred Points oj 

 Good Husbandrie, published in 1573, gives a list of fruits to be set or removed 

 in January in which he includes " pears of all sorts," and then as a separate 

 item includes " Warden, white and red," showing that " Wardens " were 

 held as distinct from the pear and that they were prominent in the orchards 

 of the time. The century ends with John Gerarde's Herball or Generall 

 Historic of Plantes, 1597, in which we are brought to the realization that 

 the pear is no longer a probationary fruit or even to be considered a novelty 

 or luxury but a standard food product. Gerarde might well be quoted in 

 full, but since Parkinson, a few years later, contains a " fuller discourse," 

 as one of Gerarde's editors says, we take but a few sentences from Gerarde. 



Varieties by this time had become numerous. Gerarde, while he 

 names but eight, says he knew someone who grew " at the point of three 

 score sundrie sorts of Peares, and those exceeding good; not doubting 

 but that if his minde had beene to seeke after multitudes he might have 

 gotten together the like number of those worse kindes * * * to 

 describe each pear apart, were to send an owle to Athens, or to number 

 those things without number." Eight sorts are considered worth figuring, 

 those accorded the honor being: " the Jenneting, Saint James, Royall, 

 Beugomot, Quince, Bishop, Katherine, and the Winter Peare." Of these 

 the Katherine is given further prominence by being listed as " known to 

 all." If one is to judge from number of varieties, the pear at this time 

 is a more general favorite than the apple, a considerably greater number 

 of sorts being indicated. 



Parkinson's account in his Paradisus of 1629, indeed does prove to 

 be a " fuller discourse " for he names and describes 65 sorts; but these are 

 not all for he says: ' The variety of peares is as much or more then of 

 apples, and I thinke it is as hard in this, as before in apples, for any to be 

 so exquisite, as that hee could number up all the sorts that are to be had: 



