NEW AMERICAN ORCHARDIST. 



the old pears ; for our best varieties of apples, and some 

 other species, are mostly native fruits, or of modern origin 



Let no one suppose that the intelligent horticulturists 

 here have never been acquainted with the best of the old 

 pears, which the intelligence and industry of ages had con- 

 centrated in France. Who is not aware that, in every good 

 collection, a proportion of the very best are alivays sent ? 

 How opposed alike to reason and to probability is the sup- 

 position, that even one of the best should have escaped ! 

 They must have been here received, in the numerous and 

 ever-varying selections in the unnumbered importations. 



Rosier, in the original edition of his celebrated Dic- 

 tionary of Agriculture, which was completed in 1801, has 

 candidly informed us, that for his description of fruits he is 

 almost wholly indebted to the no less celebrated Duhamel 

 Dumonceau ; and from the whole list of pears which he has 

 described, he has recommended as their essence, for a 

 moderate collection, fifty-three trees of nineteen varieties, 

 in different proportions. These are every one of them 

 known among us ; and more than half of them, including 

 the very best, are decidedly of the kinds long since, from 

 their defection, proscribed by those who cultivate for the 

 markets of Boston. And of the list of twelve trees, of nine 

 varieties, which he has recommended as the best of all 

 for a very small garden, three quarters of them, at least, 

 are of the kinds which have long since ceased to produce 

 perfect fruit, with those who cultivate for our markets. 



We regret the circumstance, but have ceased to wonder 

 at the cause since the same complaints of defection have 

 already reached us from other quarters even from the 

 capital of that country, for which those celebrated works 

 were principally designed. 



I shall, in the following pages, designate some of those, 

 in the class of old varieties, once the finest of all old pears, 

 whose duration we had hoped, but in vain, to perpetuate. 

 For, except in certain sections of the city, and some very 

 few solitary and highly-favored situations in the country 

 around, they have become either so uncertain in their 

 bearing so barren so unproductive or so miserably 

 blighted so mortally diseased that they are no longer 

 to be trusted ; they are no longer what they were once 

 with us, and what many of them are still described to be 

 by most foreign writers. 



