40 THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 



pared product, the pear surpasses the apple only as a canned fruit. Failing 

 in comparison with the apple, as a commercial product, pears are largely 

 left to fruit connoisseurs, and with these a generation ago the pear was 

 the fruit of fruits, many splendid collections of it having been made in 

 regions where pears could be grown. With the expansion of commercial 

 fruit-growing, collections of pears, and with them many choice varieties, 

 have gone out of cultivation — more is the pity — and pear-growing has 

 expanded least of all the fruit industries in the United States. 



With this brief discussion of the present status of pear-culture in this 

 country, we can proceed to trace the history of the pear with more 

 exactness by reason of knowing its limitations under American conditions. 



The peach is the only hardy fruit that belongs to the heroic age of 

 Spanish discovery in the New World. Pears, apples, plums, and cherries 

 came to the new continent with the French and English. The early 

 records of fruit-growing in America show that the pear came among the 

 first luxuries of the land in the French and English settlements from Canada 

 to Florida. Pioneers in any country begin at once to cultivate the soil 

 for the means of sustenance. Naturally, cereals and easily-grown nutri- 

 tious vegetables receive attention first as giving more immediate harvests 

 and more sustaining fare to supplement game and fish. Agriculture and 

 gardening usually precede orcharding, and this was the case in early settle- 

 ments in America, but not long. The first generation born in colonial 

 America knew and used all of the hardy fruits from Europe ; as many records 

 attest, and of which there is confirmatory proof with the pear in many 

 ancient pear-trees of great size near the old settlements, some of which 

 were planted by the first settlers from Europe. Of pears, many notable 

 trees planted by the hands of the first English and French who crossed 

 the seas to settle the new country were conspicuous monuments in various 

 parts of America in the memory of men still living, if, indeed, some of the 

 old trees themselves are not still standing. 



Of these ancient pear-trees, New England furnishes the most notable 

 monuments to mark the introduction of this fruit in the New World. For- 

 tunately, their histories have been preserved in several horticultural annals, 

 and of these accounts the fullest and best is by Robert Manning, Jr., in 

 the Proceedings of the American Pomological Society for 1875, pages 100 

 to 103. Manning's notes throw so much light on the early history of the 

 pear in New England, as well as upon the varieties then grown, that they 

 are published in full. 



