THE SECKEL PfeAR. 



Seckel. Coxe's View of the Cultivation of Fruit Trees, p. 189, pi. 25. 



! According to Pomological Magazine. 



SycLE, 



Red Cheeked Seckle, 



New York Red Cheek, 



Seckle, of many authors and writers. 



Shakspeare, of some French Collections. 



The encomiums bestowed upon this — undoubtedly 

 as regards richness of flavor — best of all pears, have 

 been so numerous and so universal, both at home 

 and abroad, that it would be quite superfluous to 

 recapitulate them. The late Dr. Hossack, of New 

 York, sent trees of the Seckel to the London Hor- 

 ticultural Society in 1819, and, in 1820, the fruit 

 was exhibited from the garden of Mr. Braddick, 

 which was highly extolled for its exquisitely per- 

 fumed and luscious qualities, and it at once became 

 a most popular and extensively cultivated variety. 

 To our own cultivators it has been a familiar near since first described 

 by Mr. Coxe, in his valuable work published in 1817, and though com- 

 paratively so old a variety, it is to this day more sought after than any 

 other pear, unless we except the Bartlett, and is always one of the sorts 

 planted in the very smallest collection. If it had the size of the Bart- 

 lett, or, indeed, was a moderately large pear, it would challenge — as it 

 does now in the estimation of many — the world for a rival. 



The Seckel is so named after the late Mr. Seckel, of Philadelphia, on 

 whose estate, near that city, the original tree was growing when Mr. 

 Coxe wrote his account of it. It is undoubtedly an accidental seedling, 

 believed to have sprung from a kernel of the Piousselet de Kheims, 

 partaking, as it does, of the high aroma of that variety, and greatly 

 resembling it in the wood, leaves, habit, &c. Its great excellence soon 

 became known to cultivators of the pear, and for many years it was the 

 only American variety considered worth growing. With the "White 

 Doyenne or Butter pear of Philadelphia, it was, until recently, the only 

 sort cultivated, to any extent, for the supply of the market of that city : 

 and notwithstanding the introduction of so many fine pears, well gi'own 

 specimens still command as high a price as any other variety of its season. 

 The Seckel is a very slow grower, making short stocky wood, and 

 forming, at mature age, only a low, compact, and broadly-pyramidal tree. 

 It is very tardy in coming into bearing, and does not succeed very well 

 upon the quince. 



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