40 OUR COMMON FRUITS. 



even windfalls and damaged fruit may thus be turned to 

 good account with little trouble and no expense. In 

 Grermany, Russia, and yet more in France, pears are also 

 dried ; the common sort, sold about the streets in Paris, 

 being merely slowly baked on boards in ovens after the 

 bread has been withdrawn, but their juice being thus 

 lost, they are far inferior to the more carefully prepared 

 best sort, which are first boiled until a little soft, then 

 peeled and put on a dish till the syrup drains from them, 

 afterwards placed on wicker mats in an oven for twelve 

 hours, then soaked in this syrup, to which a little sugar 

 and brandy has been added, till their own juice is thus 

 reabsorbed, after which they are replaced in the oven 

 twice or thrice until they become quite firm and of a rich 

 transparent chestnut colour, when they are packed in 

 paper-lined boxes for home use or exportation. In hotter 

 countries fires and ovens are not needed for this purpose, 

 for the traveller Burchell mentions having, when in the 

 interior of South Africa, stocked himself before crossing 

 the desert with dried pears, " the manner of preserving 

 which consisted in merely drying them whole and un- 

 peeled in the sun, and afterwards pressing them flat, by 

 which simple process they keep in perfection for more 

 than a twelvemonth, as I afterwards learnt by experience, 

 and therefore can recommend them as a valuable addition 

 to the stores of a traveller." 



As the apple yields its cyder, so too does the pear afford 

 a special beverage, less wholesome than the former, but 

 even more agreeable, and therefore scarcely less esteemed, 

 especially as it is made in far less quantities and has 

 therefore more claim to the merit of rarity, its manufac- 

 ture being now chiefly limited to the cyder districts of 

 England and France. Pears for the press may be either 

 large or small, but the more austere the taste the better 

 the liquor ; wild pears are found not unsuitable, and the 

 fruit which is esteemed best for this use is so unfit for 

 any other that not only are they quite uneatable by man, 

 but it is said that even hungry swine will hardly so much 

 as smell to them ; and it is a curious fact, though not 

 without its parallel in the annals of vegetable peculiarities, 



