26 



474 YEAKBOOK OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



PHILOPENA PEAR. 

 [PLATE LIX.] 



To the regret of pear lovers who appreciate varieties chiefly, if not 

 solely, for their flavor and quality, the trend in American pomology 

 in recent years, as judged by the character of varieties introduced, 

 has been toward superficial beauty, size, and productiveness rather 

 than toward marked improvement in dessert quality. The necessity 

 for varieties resistant to diseases affecting foliage and fruit has played 

 an important part in fostering this tendency. This is especially true 

 as regards the disease known as pear blight, to which many of the finer 

 sorts have succumbed in the South, and which renders the culture of 

 pears an uncertain undertaking in the Middle States, especially in the 

 great Mississippi Valley. It is unfortunate that the planting of a 

 number of the finer dessert sorts has practically ceased in the regions 

 mentioned, their places having been taken by the more vigorous and 

 resistant varieties of the Oriental type, none of which has yet devel- 

 oped high dessert quality. 



The fact that Seckel and a few others of the European type have 

 persisted here and there throughout the region in question, where 

 Bartlett, Clapp Favorite, Flemish Beauty, and other popular sorts 

 have succumbed, has given rise to the hope, among some growers, that 

 through the agency of seedlings of these more resistant sorts varieties 

 may ultimately be developed that will be sufficiently blight resistant 

 to endure the existing conditions and at the same time retain the 

 high quality of the parent varieties. 



Among the most promising varieties in this respect is the Philo- 

 pena, shown on PL LIX. Its record well illustrates the vicissitudes 

 that frequently attend the early history of fruit varieties which sub- 

 sequently prove their value through the possession of some strongly 

 marked characters. 



The essential facts, as related by Mr. W. II. Ragan, are as follows: 

 In 1843 the late Joshua Lindley, who had for some years conducted a 

 nursery at Monrovia, Ind., closed out his stock preparatory to return- 

 ing to his former home in Guilford County, N. C. The late Reuben 

 Ragan, of Putnam County, Ind. , purchased part of this stock. Among 

 it was a long-bodied seedling pear tree, in which was a dormant bud 

 of the Aremberg (synonym Beurre cT Aremberg) pear. As the latter 

 was a rare and high-priced variety in the region at the time, this tree 

 was given special attention by the owner, with the natural result that 

 a strong and thrifty top was quickly grown from the Aremberg bud. 

 About 1847, during one of those epidemics of pear blight which have 

 repeatedly devastated the trees of the region, the Aremberg top was 

 attacked by the disease and killed down to the seedling stock. Little 

 attention was subsequently paid to the tree until it came into bearing. 

 It was then found to yield a delicious late fall 'pear of medium size, 



