246 Descriptions of Select Varieties of Pears. 



we have delayed our description to complete this, we have 

 also been unable to glean any further account of its origin. 



Nothing is more important in pomology than uniformity of 

 nomenclature. A fruit once named, no alteration should be 

 made, even upon what might sometimes seem reasonable 

 grounds. If every individual can re-name a fruit as soon as 

 he introduces it into his garden, pomologists might give up 

 at once all attempts to reduce the chaotic confusion, which 

 already exists, into something like order. The rules which 

 govern pomological science are precisely the same as those 

 which have always governed botanical science, and are prob- 

 ably familiar to most cultivators. A fruit which has been 

 named by a special vote of a Horticultural Society, and de- 

 scribed and figured under that name, cannot be changed with- 

 out violating all these rules; and no author or pomologist who 

 had the promotion of the science at heart, and not the exhi- 

 bition of his own dogmatic opinion, would attempt such an 

 alteration. Such is the case in regard to Swan's Orange. The 

 Horticultural Society of Rochester, some years since, called it 

 after Mr. Swan, because he first exhibited specimens of the 

 fruit, and he was, in fact, the individual who brought it to 

 notice. From 1806 to 1823, a period of seventeen years, while 

 it grew in the garden of Mr. Case, we cannot learn that it had 

 a name, or that any attempt Avas made to disseminate it, or, 

 from 1823 to 1840, a period of seventeen years more, do we 

 hear any thing of it : but, no sooner did the younger Mr. Swan 

 perceive its excellence, than he exhibited the fruit, introduced 

 it to notice, and gave away the scions to nurserymen that the 

 trees might be disseminated. Will any individual say that 

 " Mr. Case's name, if that of any person, should be attached 

 to it" 1 Certainly not. And again, allowing, for a moment, 

 that Mr. Swan's name should not be coupled with it, why 

 should it be called Onondaga, a name, we admit, which we 

 should like, if it were for the first time applied. Did it origi- 

 nate in Onondaga county 1 Certainly not. It is a New Eng- 

 land pear, and grew in that ^^ sandy soil and rude climate 

 near Hartford" where " many sorts of pears that once flour- 

 ished well are now feeble, and the fruit often blighted." The 

 name of Onondaga cannot apply, and, without alluding to Mr. 

 Barry's description and figure of this variety, the priority of 



