10 



France sent over a commission to learn the methods of its 

 manufacture ; but the apple trees are now giving way to the 

 potato, though still 30,000 to 40,000 bushels of the fruit 

 are exported annually. Climate and soil seem especially 

 adapted to the cultivation of pears, of which there are some 

 fifty varieties grown, bergamottes, doyennes, bewres, etc. 

 But the most remarkable are the chaumontel, whose fruit 

 frequently reaches proportions that are truly wonderful. 

 For fear you should think I am drawing on my imagination, 

 permit me to quote from official records : 



" These pears are usually plucked about the 10th of Octo- 

 ber, but are not fit for use for several weeks, being in per- 

 fection about Christmas. Those weighing sixteen ounces 

 are regarded as first rate, and fetch good prices. Pears of 

 this size average in value twenty-five to thirty dollars per 

 hundred in the island markets ; but as they diminish in size 

 and weight the value falls rapidly, the numerous small fruit 

 being considered only fit for baking, although in point of 

 flavor they are little inferior. The largest and best grown 

 fruit on record was raised at Laporte in Guernsey in 1849. 

 It measured six and one-half inches in length, fourteen and 

 one-half in girth, and weighed thirty-eight ounces. As a 

 group of pears from a single tree, there is perhaps no more 

 remarkable instance recorded than one occurring in the sea- 

 son of 1861, when, of five fruit obtained from one tree in 

 the garden of Mr. Marquand of Bailiffs Cross, Guernsey, 

 four of them weighed together seven and one-half pounds. 

 It is worthy of remark that in this case the tree, though 

 usually prolific, bore only these five fruit. The pears in 

 question weighed respectively thirty-two and one-half, thirty- 

 three, thirty-one and one-half and twenty-two ounces." 



Equally remarkable among the vegetables are the great 

 cow cabbages. They reach a height of eight to ten feet. I 

 myself measured one that was over eleven, and at the agri- 

 cultural rooms at St. Helier there is preserved the record 

 of one whose stalk measured sixteen. It takes a year for 

 these plants to mature. They are set in November or 

 December, about two feet apart, and grow all through the 

 following season. The ground is hoed up against them when 

 they have reached a certain height, having been previously 



