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SORTS. DESCRIPTION. 



STIRLING CA.STLE. An excellent kitchen apple, keeps well. Fruit 

 large and showy. 



"WARNER'S KING. Fruit very large, roundish, ovate, deep yellow 

 with russet dots and patches. Flesh white, 

 tender and crisp. 



WELLINGTON. Late cooking apple, large, round, somewhat flat. 



Yellowish white with red on sunny side. Flesh 

 firm, cri-p and juicy, with aromatic flavour. 



WORCESTER PEAR- Dessert or cooking apple. Fruit medium size, 

 MAIN. handsome. 



THE PEAR. 



Of all fruits raised in the orchard the pear is the 

 which bears up most sturdily against neglect and ill-treat- 

 ment. Given an orchard, abandoned for a few years, the 

 first trees to die out are the tender peach and apricot, then 

 follows the orange. The apple comes next, over-run by 

 the hateful woolly aphis above and below ground. Lastly 

 comes the turn of the plum, exhausted by excessive sucker- 

 ing, and when it has dwindled from a tree to a stump with 

 a bush of water-shoots atop, the pear will often still keep 

 up a show of foliage, and perhaps still tempt the prowler 

 with a few fruits as reminiscences of former fertility. The 

 pear wants so little and gives so much. 



The soil best adapted for the permanent growth of the 

 pear is a moderately strong loam with enough lime in it to 

 ensure its openness, situated upon a dry subsoil. It is im- 

 patient of flooding, and is put back by wet hanging about 

 the roots for want of free drainage. Soils that are ex- 

 ceptionally rich stimulate a rampant growth of wood in- 

 compatible with good bearing qualities. Apart from ex- 

 tremes, however, the pear is not nearly so fastidious as the 

 peach, and gives excellent results with any ordinary garden 

 soil kept reasonably open and well drained. 



The pear is essentially a ' dessert '' fruit, and is of 

 somewhat more limited service than the apple. But it is 

 just as distinctly a "keeping" fruit. In some respects 



