THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 155 



ness that characterizes the fruits in happier situations. Size shrinks also 

 when poorly grown, so that one may say that a small pear of this variety 

 is seldom fit for dessert and too insipid for a good product in cookery. The 

 trees are vigorous, hardy, and healthy, bear abundantly under favorable 

 conditions, and succeed either as a standard or a dwarf. Possibly it is 

 best grown as a dwarf, and in America at least is more often worked on the 

 dwarfing quince than on the pear. In fact, this variety is the favorite 

 dwarf-pear for garden and home orchard, and commercial orchards of 

 dwarfed trees of it are not uncommon. On either stock, the tree makes a 

 beautiful, symmetrical pyramid, comes in bearing early, and bears regularly. 

 This variety is more popular in New York than in any other part of America, 

 and while less planted than formerly, is still regarded as a standard late 

 autumn variety. It is a particularly desirable sort for the pear-fancier. 



The original tree of Duchesse dAngouleme was a wilding growing in 

 a garden near Angers, Maine-et-Loire, France. About 1808, M. Audusson, 

 a nurseryman at Angers, appreciating the beauty and excellent quality of 

 the pear, obtained the right to propagate it. In 1812 he began selling 

 trees of the variety under the name of " Poire des Eparonnais." In 1820, 

 M. Audusson sent a basket of the fruit to the Duchesse dAngouleme with 

 a request for permission to name the pear in her honor , a request which was 

 granted. At the exhibition of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society 

 held in 1830, Samuel G. Perkins showed a specimen which measured eleven 

 and three-tenths inches. It was the only one that grew on the tree, and was 

 considered to be the first fruit of this variety produced in America. The 

 American Pomological Society added Duchesse dAngouleme to its catalog- 

 list of fruits in 1862. 



Tree medium in size, vigorous, upright-spreading, dense-topped, slow-growing, usually 

 hardy, productive; trunk thick; branches stocky, shaggy, zigzag, dull reddish-brown 

 overspread with scarf-skin, marked with small lenticels; branchlets thick, short, dull light 

 brown, streaked with gray scarf-skin, smooth, glabrous, with many small, raised lenticels. 



Leaf -buds small, short, conical, pointed, nearly free; leaf -scars prominent. Leaves 

 25 in long, if in. wide, oval, thick, leathery; apex taper-pointed; margin marked with 

 minute dark brown glands, crenate or nearly entire; petiole if in. long. Flower-buds 

 large, long, conical, plump, free, arranged singly or in small clusters on short branches and 

 spurs; flowers if in. across, 7 or 8 buds in each cluster; pedicels 1 in. long, slender, lightly 

 pubescent, greenish. 



Fruit ripe October to November; large, often very large, 4 in. long, 3 in. wide, uni- 

 form in size, oblong-obovate-pyriform, with irregular and uneven surface and with sides 

 often unequal; stem frequently if in. long, very thick, curved; cavity acute, deep, furrowed, 



