CHINESE SAND 



strong," grew into a tall, beautiful tree, and soon began to 

 bear a large, fine fruit, excellent for cooking, for preserv- 

 ing, and for dessert. 



Major Le Conte had presented this tree to Mrs. Harden, 

 and after its true nature had been thus revealed, a friend 

 of the latter, Major Varnadoe, secured a cutting and 

 started the second Le Conte pear tree in Georgia, but just 

 then came our terrible civil war and the tree was neglected. 

 Peace restored, the Major turned back to his old project 

 again of propagating this grand tree on a large scale, and 

 when he moved to Thomas County, Ga., in 1869, he car- 

 ried with him a great quantity of these cuttings, and from 

 the young trees that resulted from these was inaugurated 

 what has already proved to be in Georgia, and will soon 

 prove to be in Florida, a veritable " bonanza." 



The oldest growers of the Chinese sand pear race have 

 yet to meet with a single case of blight, or other disease, 

 or defective fruit. 



The Le Conte pear roots with extreme ease, if kept 

 slightly moist while rooting, and grows off afterward with 

 great rapidity, frequently attaining a height of thirty feet 

 in seven years, with limbs twenty feet long bending to the 

 ground under their weight of delicious fruit, until such a 

 tree, fully fruited, resembles a weeping willow, so far as 

 its branches are concerned. The general shape of the tree 

 is that of a cone, and is very handsome. 



It is of unexampled prolificacy, it being no uncommon 

 thing for a tree to bear from four to six bushels of fruit 

 at its first bearing, and at its fourth year to yield twenty 

 bushels of fine, marketable pears. 



They ripen about the first to the middle of July, more 

 than a month before the earliest of all other pears, and 

 hence always "skim the cream" of the markets. Major 

 Varnadoe, a year or two ago, received ten dollars a bushel 



