208 [ THE PEAR TREE 



the colour, they keep better and are therefore more 

 marketable. All other pears which ripen from the ist 

 August onwards, should be gathered some days 

 before they begin to show the colour of maturity. If 

 allowed to remain on the tree until the colour begins to 

 form, they may increase in size as well as in weight, but 

 they lose much in flavour and keeping quality, may 

 become coarse and fibrous, and very often rot inside at 

 the core (bletissure) before acquiring their full colour, that 

 is when in reality they are still unripe. All these pears 

 require the dark and even temperature of the fruit room to 

 develop their colour, their flavour, and their keeping 

 qualities to the best advantage. If the fruit is picked from 

 the tree a few days earlier than its proper moment, its 

 maturation is greatly delayed, and the rind will show 

 signs of shrinkage, by the formation of wrinkles around 

 the stalk and sometimes lower down on the body of the 

 pear, so that the difficulty is not solved by anticipating the 

 harvest. It is true that the late pears, those ripening in 

 December-April, always show a tendency to shrink 

 around the stalk, and that this slight shrinkage is unavoid- 

 able, and is not considered a defect ; but in the autumn 

 pears, those ripening from September to November, any 

 shrinkage however small, is really a defect due to 

 anticipated harvesting and is generally associated with 

 hardness of texture and want of sugar and aroma. 

 Moreover the time of maturation of imported varieties of 

 pears is so often either advanced or delayed as compared 

 with that of the place of origin, that a hard and fast rule 

 is not practicable, and the cultivator must rely chiefly on 

 his local experience rather than on that of the foreign 

 grower. The difficulty is further increased by the fact that 

 the same imported variety of pear, not being yet duly 

 acclimatized, sometimes varies its time of maturity from 

 year to year. In Italy it is the custom to pick the 

 summer pears two or three days before maturity, and the 

 autumn pears from ten to fifteen days before the time 

 when they are expected to ripen ; but the winter pears 



