158 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and rich. The fruit resembles Beurre Bosc in color, texture, aud 

 quality, and keeps well. The tree is a free grower and productive. 

 Altogether this is one of the most promising new pears. It origi- 

 nated at the nurseries of Andre Leroy, at Angers, France, and 

 first fruited in 1863. 



October 20, Edward S. Ritchie presented a Seckel pear, grown 

 at his garden in Brookline, which w^as thought to be the largest 

 specimen of that variet}' ever seen at the rooms. It measured 

 around the middle nine and four-tenths inches, and weighed, when 

 taken from the tree, eight ounces. The quality was excellent. 



Asahel Foote, of Williamstown, who exhibited at the meeting 

 of the American Pomological Society here, in 1873, a collection of 

 seedling pears and apples, has the present season sent specimens 

 of several kinds to Marshall P. Wilder and myself, by whom they 

 have been tested with the following results :j 



Hoosac. — From seed of Hacon's Incomparable, and formerly 

 known as " Hacon Seedling No. 3." Medium size ; obovate ob- 

 tuse pyriform ; pale yellow with raan}'^ russet dots and tracings. 

 Flesh with some grit around the core, juicy and butter}'', slightly 

 acid, spirited and rich. 



'Fall cVAremberg. — Medium size, roundish, flattened ; color, dull 

 yellow and thin russet with a brownish red cheek. It has much of 

 the spirited flavor of the Beurre d' Aremberg, but is not handsome 

 enough to take a place in the list for general cultivation. 



Footers White Seckel. — Small ; pyriform, inclining to turbinate ; 

 pale yellow with a slight brownish blush ; sweet and tolerably juicy. 

 Very unlike other seedlings from the Seckel, which have, so far as 

 we recollect, invariabl}^ resembled their parent in color. This ap- 

 pears, in losing the Seckel color, to have lost the peculiar flavor and 

 aroma which makes that variety so highly prized. 



Christmas Beurre, or " Seedling Virgalieu, No. 4." — Full me- 

 dium size ; ovate pyriform ; dull green with thin russet towards 

 the stem and sometimes sprinkled with red next the sun ; some- 

 what stony at core, juicy and rich. ''Very good" to "best." 

 Mr. Foote says it was in eating last year till into January. No 

 affinity to its parent, the White Doyenne, or Virgalieu of New 

 York, was noticed. 



Footers Seckel. — This has been highly commended by eminent 

 poraologists, but the specimens received this year were hardly as 

 good as the old Seckel. In form it is rounder and more flattened. 



