88 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and if in some places it has become exhausted of the essential elements, 

 there is abundance of it even yet virgin to the pear, and the climate, in- 

 stead of having become more rigorous, has, if anything, been somewhat 

 ameliorated, though it has probably undergone but little change of any 

 kind, unless it may be that the average quantity of snow has diminished. 



But, while it is not denied that the soil and climate is as propitious as 

 formerly, it is believed that the character of the tree, in the modern varie- 

 ties, has been essentially modified and changed by cultivation ; that most 

 of the tine varieties of recent origin are less hardy, have much less powers 

 of endurance than the old varieties, of which those ancient trees consist. 

 Although in but few, if in any cases, it has yet approached it. Dr. Van Mons 

 seems to think there is a point beyond which cultivation cannot be carried, 

 when the individual would be incapable of propagating its kind, its seeds 

 would be abortive, and when the next stage must be death. 



The pear, in its wild, and what may be considered as its normal state, is 

 a shrubby, thorny, slow-growing tree, with rather small foliage, of close, 

 compact, hard wood, coming late into bearing, that, in its cultivated or ab- 

 normal state, seems to undergo a complete transformation, and to become 

 converted into a rapid-growing tree, generally free from thorns, with large 

 foliage, not very compact or close-grained wood, coming early into bearing. 



The fruit of the wild pear is small, hard, astringent with many stony con- 

 cretions, and can hardly be considered as edible; while that of the cultivated 

 tree is the delicious fruit so generally held in high estimation, becoming, 

 in the last stages of high cultivation, a mere mass of pulp, filled with rich 

 juice, entirely free from all stony concretions, even at the bottom of the 

 stem. 



It is only as the tree recedes from its type that the change occurs in the 

 fruit — and the farther this remove is effected the greater is the change that 

 takes place, in both tree and fruit. Dr. Van Mons thought that the time 

 would come when pears, reproducing themselves by seed, or being all good 

 when raised from seed, would be propagated in no other way, and that 

 grafting and budding would be entirely dispensed with. And he consid- 

 ered that he had ascertained, in his own experience, that the farther his 

 system of raising successive generations of seedlings was carried, the sooner 

 the trees thus produced came into bearing. 



How this great change in the tree has been brought about it is not easy 

 positively to say. Dr. Van Mons believed that it was effected by no other 

 agent than cultivation. That, although a wild pear would, when left in its 

 natural state, continue always to produce its like from seed, yet if it was 

 removed and subjected to the influences of cultivation, that the fruit 

 would be thefeby affected ; that by sowing the seed of fruit in this disposi- 

 tion to change, a new and improved variety would be produced, and that by 

 prosecuting this system, that is, planting seed of this seedling, and so on, 

 for several successive generations, that the highly improved varieties, such 

 as are now in cultivation, would be obtained. And in his own practice, 

 and by the success that attended it. Dr. Van Mons seems to have estab- 

 lished the truth of his theory. Yet, it is possible, that he did not take sufS- 



