FIFTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 33 



opinion, bnt. so far. it looks extremely favorable. It is a 

 gcK)d grower and prolific ami very beautiful; it is tlie hand- 

 somest pear I know of, more so than even the Clapp's Favorite 

 imder its most favorable conditions. 



There is one strong- point in the Bosc pear 1 want to men- 

 tion. The IJosc pear is always thinned on the tree, almost 

 always ; once in a while we have to thin a little, but the fruit 

 will be tmiversally number one. My crop of Bosc this year 

 was graded as fancy, and the number ones brought within 

 jiftv cents a box of what the fancy pears did, and that is quite 

 3. consideration. We get a croj) every year of the Fiosc variety. 



If I had a local market, there is one early pear that I think 

 pretty well of ; it is the variety I spoke of a little while ago 

 as being weak in the foliage, and that is the Manning's Eliza- 

 beth. A few years ago that pear sold very good in the New 

 York market, but of late there has not seemed to be an espe- 

 cial demand for early pears, there are so many pears coming 

 in from other places. But for the local market the Manning's 

 is a good pear to grow. 



The old Scckel pear is the only pear that I would not 

 hesitate to use lots of any kind of manure on, and if the tree 

 is bearing it will stand a wonderful amount of food. I have 

 used both stable manure and commercial fertilizers, and I 

 liave some trees I put on a high grade of fertilizer at the rate 

 of a ton to the acre, and all those trees grow heavy crops of 

 fruit, and I don't have any blight under those conditions. 

 ' Speaking about Bartlett pears: If we ship them to the 

 market when they are ripe ; it is before the people have returned 

 from their summer vacations; and so we don't want to place 

 those Bartlett pears on the market until they get back, and 

 we find the markets then are very much better, and for that 

 reason we use cold storage, retarding the ripening of the 

 Bartlett for four or five weeks, and the Seckel the same way. 

 Mr. Haij:: I want to ask Mr. Cornell if he knows whether 

 his soil is full of lime? 



Mr. Cornell: Xo, sir; we have something of a limestone 

 soil ; there is a good deal of limestone soil in our section, but 

 I don't know as the land on which I am growing pears can 

 l)e called verv rich in lime. There is considerable slate in 



