270 Retrospective Criticism. 



of Chon, or Citre of Clion, to be found \ You will find it, as I believe, in 

 none ; consequently, some portion, at least, of your censure, as implied, be- 

 longs evidently to me alone, and, for reasons which I know not, a share also 

 of your rebuke thus obviously aimed. By permission, therefore, I embrace 

 the first moment of leisure to reply to your remarks, by giving to the pub- 

 lic, through your columns, tlie history of the fruit, from the materials 

 which, fortunately, are at hand, and from the country also of its origin. 



The trees of this variety were, as I believe, first sent hither by the 

 late Mr. Parmentier, to the late Judge Heard, of Watertowu, under the 

 erroneous name of Dourgincstre ; and by him the fruit w'as first exhibited 

 at the rooms of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society ; and by him 

 also was the variety disseminated around Boston imder that mistaken 

 name. But when the 2d edition and Descriptive Catalogue of the Lon- 

 don Horticultural Society was published, which was about 1833, it be- 

 came evident that the Bourgmestre of that Catalogue was another and 

 very different description of fruit from this. Not long after, and by re- 

 quest, scions of the Bourgmestre of that garden were sent by Mr. Thomp- 

 son to Mr. Manning and to me, and the true Bourgmestre or fruit thus 

 sent by him proved to be no synonym of this, that being a fruit of qrdtc 

 another description. Yet at the time when, in 1838, Mr. Manning wrote 

 his '■'Book of Frmts,^^ to w^hich you have alluded, he knew not the true 

 name of the fruit in question which he then and there described, or of any 

 of its synonyms ; of this he was perfectly conscious at the time, hence 

 he says at the page you have quoted , ' ' this is not the Bourgmestre of the 

 London Horticultural Society's Catalogue.''^ 



Previous to this period, trees or scions had been received by him also of 

 the Poire Monsieur or Le Cure, and not long after his publication, as 

 above, he had ascertained, and was enabled to state to me confidently, 

 that the fruit heretofore known, in this vicinity, only as the Bourgmestre, 

 was identically not the true Bourgmestre, but the Le Curi of France, as 

 it is commonly called. 



Near the garden of the London Horticultural Society, and nearest to 

 that source of intelligence, I have heard this fruit called Le Cure by sev- 

 eral intelligent nurserymen, but never in that locality have I heard it 

 called by any English name. At Vitry, France, intelligent nurserymen 

 called it Lc Cure, or Monsieur Le Cure ; but Monsieur Jamin, of Paris, 

 in his catalogue, calls it Belle de Berri, or Poire Le Cur^ ; and Monsieur 

 Dalbret, superintendent of the fruit department at the Garden of Plants, at 

 Paris, in his celebrated treatise on pruning fruit trees, calls it Belle de Berri, 

 Pater Nolle, Le Cure, &c. ; " Poire Monsieur," as above quoted, being 

 only a title, is evidently improper to be applied, as a proper name, either 

 to this or any other new fruit, since it has long been appropriated as the 

 synonym of another and an old fruit, namely, of the old " Saint Mi- 

 chael.' ' See the Pomological Magazine and the Catalogue of the 

 London Horticultural Society. Many other fruits tliere are bearing 

 titles, such as those of " Saint,'' or of ^^ Bezi," [Wilding] but these 

 titles are never deemed proper to be used alone, or without the addition 

 of the proper name of the Saint, or of the proper name of the place 

 where found. So also of Le Cure, this being hut a title, and not the 

 proper name of any person or place, how liable to be misapplied. In 

 England, as it appears, Le Cur6 having been introduced, and bearing 

 a fugitive title only, that title became speedily transformed, and ere 



