BOSTON AND VICINITY. 43 



throp, where a most generous hospitality, and cordial 

 welcome are extended to the numerous friends of Mr. 

 and Mrs. Winthrop, both of our own and foreign lands. 



Here, also, are the fine estate and extensive glass 

 structures of John Lowell Gardner, to whom we have 

 alluded already, by whose liberality for a long 

 course of years the exhibitions of the Massachusetts 

 Horticultural Society have been graced and enriched 

 by elegant plants and products from the hands of his 

 experienced gardener, Mr. Atkinson. Mr. Gardner's 

 mother was sister to the Hon. John Lowell, and he in- 

 herits the same taste for rural life and culture for which 

 Mr. Lowell was so renowned. His father, as we have 

 seen, also possessed like tastes, when they resided in 

 Summer street, where foreign grapes and pears were 

 grown in open air. The Saint Germain pear was very 

 large; and of the Brown Beurre, Mr. Gardner says: "I 

 have never seen finer specimens." 



No doubt good gardens were early made at Muddy 

 Brook when it was a part of Boston. The elegant 

 estate of the Hon. Amos A. Lawrence at Long wood, 

 was once the farm of Judge Sewall, on which there 

 are relics of pear culture. One of the trees, a very large 

 one, was destroyed by a gale several years ago. The 

 largest which remains, though with lessened propor- 

 tions, now measures, at six inches above the ground, 

 nine feet two inches in circumference. Thirty years 

 ago it bore what is called the Button -pear, but has 

 since been regrafted with another variety. Judge 

 Sewall, in his diary between 1680 and 1700, mentions 

 grafting trees at his house in Boston with "Button 

 pears." The grafts were probably taken from this tree. 1 

 Hon. William Amory has a lovely place at Longwood. 



l Hon. Amos A. Lawrence's letter. 



