WINTER PEARS. 



431 



Fig. 198. Columbia. 



than any other early winter fruit. It is large, handsome, very 

 productive, and has a rich, sugary flavour, resembling, but 

 often surpassing, that of the Beurre Diel. The original tree 

 grows on the farm of Mr. Casser, in Westchester co., 13 miles 

 from New- York. Its productiveness may be judged of from 

 the fact that a .single graft, five years inserted, has borne over 

 four bushels in a single season, and its value as a market fruit, 

 from the pears having readily brought six dollars per bushel in 

 the New- York market. The tree grows upright, with stout 

 brownish-yellow shoots. This fine pear was first brought into 

 notice a few years since, by Bloodgood & Co., of Flushing. 

 Young wood stout, upright, yellowish-brown. 



Fruit large, regularly formed, obovate, usually a little ob- 

 long, and always broadest in the middle. Skin smooth and fair, 

 pale green in autumn, but when ripe, of a fine golden yellow. 



