ANCIENT FRUIT TREES. 15 



the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in 1833. This tree stood 

 near the meeting-house in Natick, and was called the Orange 

 Sweeting, and was a favorite with the Indians. It will be remem- 

 bered that Eliot deceased in 1690. Another apple tree, imported 

 from England, and planted in the garden of the Wyllis family in 

 Hartford, Conn., before the middle of the seventeenth century, 

 produced on a few weak limbs at the top of the tree some dozens 

 of apples in 1822. It was of the Pcarmain variety. 1 



Other interesting relics are the Orange pear tree in the garden 

 of Capt. Charles Allen at Salem, supposed to have been planted 

 about 1640, and other ancient trees of that variety in the same 

 city, now or recently living ; the Warden and Messire Jean pears in 

 the Pickering garden in Salem, the former grafted on the day the 

 battle of Lexington was fought ; an ancient Apple pear, also in 

 Salem until 1878 ; 2 the trees of the Black Pear of Worcester, or 

 Iron pear in Dorchester, said to be more than two centuries old ; 

 an English Pearmain apple tree in Weathersfield, Conn., brought 

 from England by William Try an, now measuring nearly eleven 

 feet in circumference, having, according to tradition, yielded fruit 

 nearly a century before the Revolution, and in 1877 still in good 

 bearing condition ; 8 the original tree of the Pinneo pear, at Co- 

 lumbia, Conn., reputed to be one hundred and forty years old ; 4 the 

 original tree in the town of Chelmsford of the pear of the same 

 name, once valued for its size and beauty, which was a very large 

 tree before the destructive gale of September, 1816, when it was 

 much injured ; 5 the row of trees of the Hunt Russet apple on the 

 old Hunt farm in Concord, Mass., believed to be at least two hun- 

 dred years old ; 6 and the four healthy trees still remaining of an 

 apple orchard, planted, probably as early as 1770, on the Bacon 

 farm in Richmond, Mass. 7 



A paper in the Philosophical Transactions, 8 by Paul Dudley, 

 F.R.S., and chief justice of Massachusetts, who resided at Roxbury, 

 gives a vivid idea of the extent to which the culture of fruit and 

 vegetables had attained in 1726 ; but he says not a word of flowers. 



1 Letter of Hon. John Welles to Hon. John Lowell in Mass. Agricultural Repository, 

 Vol. VIII. pp. 280, 281. 



Proceedings of the American Pomological Society for 1875, pp. 101, 102. 



Massachusetts Ploughman, Dec. 15, 1877. 



American Agriculturist, 1876, p. 422. 



Hovey's Magazine, Vol. VI. p. 18. 



Transactions of the Mass. Horticultural Society, Part 1. 1875, p. 63. 



Michigan Farmer, Nov. 14, 1876. 



Abridgment, Vol. VI. Part H. p. 341. 



