THE PEAK. 33 



old." An ancient medical authority affirms that "the 

 red warden is of great virtue conserved, roasted, or baked 

 to quench choler ; " but as it would be libellous to sup- 

 pose that cloistered serenity could itself require the fruit 

 on this account, imagination is free to picture the bene- 

 volent recluses sending round a basket of pears to any 

 notedly fiery spirits in the neighbourhood, as modern 

 good people might distribute a bundle of tracts. 



In the time of Gerard, that which stood at the head of 

 his list as the best of all the " tame pears " then known, 

 and which he calls the Pyrus superba sive KatJierina, was 

 no other than the little brilliant-coloured but ill-flavoured 

 fruit which furnished one of our old poets with so charm- 

 ing an illustration of his mistress's beauty, when he says 

 that 



"Her cheek was like the Catherine pear, 

 The side that 's next the sun ; " 



but which, though it still holds a place on London street 

 stalls on account of being so early ripe, has long since 

 sunk below the appetite of any but children. It might 

 almost be said that it is only during the last 60 or 70 

 years that the pear has actually been known in Europe, 

 so great is the change that has taken place in it from 

 what it was before that time, when it had hardly begun 

 to manifest the perfection of which it is capable. It was 

 in Belgium, which has therefore been prettily termed the 

 " Eden of the pear-tree," that attention was first attracted 

 to it, and to a native of that country, M. Van Mons, who 

 actually devoted his life to pears and their improvement, 

 we chiefly owe it that the poor varieties which gave a 

 modicum of enjoyment to our forefathers have disappeared 

 from all good gardens, and resigned their place to aris- 

 tocratic races of rich and varied flavour, intensified to a 

 degree hitherto unimagined. This gentleman was no mere 

 empiric lighting accidentally on lucky expedients in fruit 

 growing, but a scientific philosopher, who, having con- 

 ceived a theory, set resolutely to work to test it by years 

 of patient experimentalizing ; for believing that originally 

 there were but few, perhaps but one, species of any genus 

 of plants, and that while in a wild state Nature only 



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