BOSTON AND VICINITY. 31 



Seckel pear tree, near Philadelphia. He sent them care- 

 fully home in a letter, and his son Jonathan grafted them 

 before his return, they being the first of the kind, as 

 far as he knew, in this vicinity. The tree is still 

 flourishing, and on Saturday, September 27th, 1879, there 

 were picked from it over two barrels of pears. One 

 individual pear, by actual measurement, was eight and 

 five-eights inches each way round. The family had 

 never seen one to equal it in size. There was also 

 where Schuyler street now is, an immemorial Iron pear 

 tree, so tall that the crown of the tree was usually 

 not picked. In thq latter part of the eighteenth 

 century and* the first of the present, the fruit of the 

 mulberry was much esteemed, there being few of the 

 many small fruits now cultivated. The widow of the 

 second Ebenezer realized in one season seventy dollars 

 from the fruit sold from one large tree which stood in 

 front of the house, beside using much herself for the 

 entertainment of friends. It lived till after the marriage, 

 in 1820, of the granddaughter, who remembers it well. 

 This farm was also celebrated for its cherries, the trees 

 having been blown down in the gale of 1815. The 

 late George J. Parker had large fields of currants 

 and gooseberries. There have been gathered in one 

 year fifty barrels of gooseberries from bushes that he 

 planted. 1 



Prior to the present century Judge John Lowell was a 

 leading patron in the promotion of improved agriculture, 

 and was president of the Massachusetts Society for Pro- 

 moting Agriculture, for many years. He had an orchard, 

 garden, and one of the first greenhouses, and contributed 

 to the fund for establishing the Botanic Garden at Cam- 

 bridge. 2 This property was inherited by his son, Hon. 



1 Letter of Miss Parker, granddaughter of Hon. Eben Seaver. 



2 Augustus Lowell's letter. 



