THE PEAR. 81 



vigour, as to require five or six years of successive 

 mutilations to transform them into fruit-bearers. 



Attention to the Fruit. To complete the preceding 

 observations, it should be observed, that nothing tends 

 more to exhaust a tree and destroy the fruit-spurs 

 than allowing too great a quantity of fruit to ripen 

 upon it. It absorbs almost all the sap, and not only is 

 the formation of new fruit-buds prevented for the fol- 

 lowing year, but the existing ones are destroyed for 

 want of nourishment. The principal branches put out 

 only small, poor terminal shoots, and the roots are 

 scarcely able to put forth sufficient force to extend 

 their ramifications, so as to draw nourishment from a 

 wider zone of earth beyond that which has been im- 

 poverished by the precedent vegetation. The tree 

 then remains in a languishing and sterile condition 

 for years. The end which nature purposes to attain 

 by the fructification of fruit trees differs from the object 

 that we have in view. Nature only seeks the pro- 

 duction of the largest quantity of seeds, irrespective of 

 the pulp of the fruit, in order to promote in the 

 greatest degree the multiplication of the individual 

 species. The object we strive to attain is the largest 

 quantity of pulpy material, without regard to seeds. 

 The quantity of seeds is in proportion to the number 

 of the fruits ; the larger the number, the less pulpy 

 are they, and their quality is, in an equal degree, 

 deteriorated. 



It is therefore of the greatest importance to suppress 

 the superabundant fruits, in order to regulate the crop 

 and improve the quality. We lose in number, truly, 



E 3 



