72 Pear-Growing in "Egypt!' 



The Newhall Pear is one of the varieties raised from seed sown at same 

 time with Clapp's Favorite ; the original tree still remaining in the collec- 

 tion of Messrs. F. and L. Clapp, Dorchester, Mass. 



Marshall P. Wilder. 



PEAR-GROWING IN "EGYPT." 



The hill-country of Southern Illinois, which embraces a territory half as 

 large as Massachusetts, extending from the Mississippi to the Ohio, and 

 traversed longitudinally by the Illinois Central Railroad, is a district pecu- 

 liarly adapted to the growth, in great perfection, of most kinds of fruits 

 common to temperate climates. Apples are an emphatic success here, the 

 trees being very healthy, all varieties hardy, and the crop, as a whole, relia- 

 ble every year ; there being but one exception to this, I think, in the last 

 twenty years. Peaches are probably nowhere better or more reliable, as 

 we have fair crops two years out of three. The berries are all at home ; 

 strawberries particularly yielding greater returns for the culture given than 

 in any other section within my knov/ledge. 



But it is of pears that I would speak, as of richer promise than any 

 other fruit, and more promising here than in any other locality in the 

 Mississippi Valley. 



It is but ten years since fruit-growing was first commenced in this region 

 as a business ; and pears were sparsely planted at first, so that our experi- 

 ence with varieties is limited as to time and number : but from the general 

 health and productiveness of the old trees scattered over the country by 

 the original settlers, and from the general effects of climate and soil in 

 both trees and fruit of the later planting, we look with great confidence to 

 the results of the next quarter of a century in this department of orchard- 

 culture. 



The product of the first small planting of good varieties has stimulated 

 quite an extensive planting at all points noted for fruit-growing. This 

 amounts to about fifty thousand trees in this immediate neighborhood (South 

 Pass), to which every year makes respectable additions ; and we anticipate, 

 that, ere many years, the Egyptian pear-crop will be sensibly felt in most of 

 the fruit-markets of the country. 



