4 2 



THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 



M. Endicott, a descendant of the Governor, in Hovey's Magazine of Hor- 

 ticulture, vol. xix, p. 254, June, 1853, from which the above account has 

 been mainly derived. Each of these articles is illustrated with a cut of 

 the pear. 



" The Orange Pear. This tree is owned by Capt. Charles H. Allen, 

 and stands in his yard on Hardy street, Salem. The Rev. Dr. Bentley, 

 who died about 1820, investigated the history of this tree and found it 

 to be then 180 years old, which would make it now 235 years old. The 

 trunk is hollow, nine feet five inches in circumference in the smallest part 

 near the ground; just below the limbs it is several inches more. The tree 

 is more than forty feet high, and the limbs are supported by shores. It 

 was grafted in the limbs, as a branch fifteen or twenty years old, shooting 

 out several feet higher than a man's head, produces ' Button ' pears, and 

 a large limb, part of which was ' Button ' which grew out still higher up, 

 was blown off several years ago. In the very favorable pear season of 

 1862 it bore thirteen and a half bushels of pears. It bears in alternate years, 

 having produced eight and a half bushels in 1873. The brittleness of the 

 limbs of old pear trees is well known, yet Capt. Allen, with a care worthy 

 of imitation, gathers every pear, excepting about a dozen specimens, by 

 hand. 



" This variety was, until the introduction of the modern kinds, highly 

 esteemed. It is above medium size, averaging fifty-six pears to the peck, 

 globular obtuse pyriform, covered with thin russet, juicy when gathered 

 early and ripened in the house; of pleasant flavor but rather deficient in 

 this respect. It is ripe about the middle of September. It was considered 

 by my father a native, and was called by him the American Orange, and 

 after examination of the descriptions and plates, I cannot think it the same 

 as the Orange Rouge or Orange d'Automne of Duhamel, Decaisne, and 

 Leroy. The Hon. Paul Dudley, Esq., of Roxbury, in some ' Observations 

 on some of the Plants in New England with remarkable Instances of the 

 Power of Vegetation,' communicated to the Royal Society of London (I 

 quote from the ' Philosophical Transactions,' abridged, London, 1734, 

 Vol. VI, Part II, p. 341), says: ' An Orange Pear Tree grows the largest, 

 and yields the fairest fruit. I know one of them near forty Foot high, that 

 measures six Foot and six Inches in Girt, a Yard from the Ground, and 

 has borne thirty Bushels at a Time, and this Year I measured an Orange 

 pear, that grew in my own Orchard, of eleven Inches round the Bulge.' 



" If this is, as believed, of native origin, it is the oldest American fruit 

 in cultivation, unless we except the Apple pear, which is probably of about 

 the same date. This is small, oblate, of pale yellow color, ripening in August. 

 It is quite distinct from the Poire Pomme d'Hiver, of Leroy, and I think 

 also from the Poire Pomme d'Ete, of the same author. I had supposed 

 the variety to be extinct, but last year discovered in a garden in Salem 



