PEARS. 



Pear (Pyrus communis), though fou ad wild in some parts of England, b a native of 

 the temperate parts of Europe and Western Asia, and has been found in the Himalayas. 

 Koch states that other wild species have had more or less to do with the origin of culti- 

 vated pears, but the probability is that most, if not all, the varieties in cultivation have 

 originated from the common pear. Be that as it may, it is certain that the pear was 

 cultivated by the Assyrians, Greeks, and Eomans from a period of remote antiquity. 

 Theophrastus, the "divine orator" of Greece, mentions the pear; also the Eoman 

 authors, Cato, Varro, Colurnella, Pliny, Virgil, and Palladius. Pliny describes many 

 varieties ; the names, Assyrian, Grecian, Alexandrian, and Tiberian, are proofs of popu- 

 larity, and the last-named pear was the favourite variety of the Emperor Tiberias. The 

 cultivated varieties are believed to have been introduced by the Eomans into Gaul, and 

 thence into England. 



Chaucer, in the fourteenth century, names the pear, as does Shakespeare, but he has 

 no eulogy for the fruit. There were, however, good pears in Parkinson's time (1629), 

 including the Windsor (so called because grown on Windsor Hill), and a century later Batty 

 Langley mentioned Autumn Bergamot, Brown Beurre', Crasanue, Epine d'Hiver (Winter 

 Thorn), Hampden's Bergamot, Jargonelle, and Swan's Egg. Sir Thomas B. Hanmer, 

 early in the eighteenth century, added twenty-seven varieties "out of France." Miller, 

 in 1759, selected eighty varieties for description out of two hundred and fifty, and in 

 1831 Lindley enumerated one hundred and fifty dessert pears. In 1842 a list of four 

 hundred and forty-two varieties was published by the Eoyal Horticultural Society, and 

 in 1885 six hundred and fifteen reputedly distinct varieties were exhibited in the 

 Society's Garden, Chiswick. Dr. Hogg's last edition of the Fruit Manual (1884) con- 

 tains scientific descriptions of six hundred and fifty varieties ; also much historical and 

 useful information. 



Although we have a few pears of English origin, due to the efforts of Knight, 

 Ingram, Huyshe, Eivers, and others, the majority of the best varieties have been 



