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abortions which crowd our markets. The fruit-store or 

 ripening-house should be fitted with skeleton shelves made 

 of battens laid fairly open. These serve for ordinary fruit 

 requiring free circulation of air and some manipulation 

 from time to time. For pears, however, there should be 

 provided flat shallow boxes with a close flap-cover, hinged 

 on with leather strips. The depth will be about four 

 inches, and the length and breadth about 24 by 18 or 20 

 inches. On the bottom is laid a very thin layer of buck- 

 wheat chaff, if it can be had, or finely cut and dried new 

 straw. Over this goes a piece of cheap woollen stuff, and 

 on it the pears are laid, close but not touching. The cloth 

 is large enough to fold right over and cover the fruit com- 

 pletely. Then the lid flaps down and puts the pears in 

 the dark. According to the kind, a space of time varying 

 from three or four days to nearly as many weeks inter- 

 venes. All that is necessary is to remove any individual 

 pear that has suffered a bruise, undetected at time of stor- 

 ing, and is bletting. If allowed to remain it would injure 

 the flavour of its neighbours. In this way the fruit ripens 

 to a rich, buttery consistence, possesses the indescribably 

 delicious pear flavour in perfection, and takes the eye with a 

 smooth skin and a high golden colour never seen on the 

 fruit out of doors. There are many sorts which, without 

 such treatment, ripen only to a dry, mealy consistence, 

 flavourless, and even gritty. Winter pears of dessert 

 kinds should hang as long as possible on the tree, and then 

 be wrapped in paper, singly, and put away for keeping. 

 Batches of these, in their turn, are transferred, a fortnight 

 before use, to a warmer room at about 60 to 65, and 

 with this rise of temperature they too become buttery in 

 consistence and full flavoured. 



In the propagation of pears it is inadvisable to bud or graft 

 on the chance suckers which rise in the orchard from the 

 roots of other pears. Sucker stocks are generally poorly 

 rooted, and follow their kind in producing suckers them- 

 selves. They therefore do not do full justice to the scion. 

 It is far better to raise seedling stocks from strong, vigorous, 

 common varieties, avoiding seed of the choicer sorts, in which 

 the vegetative system has been more or less sacrificed to the 

 fruit-bearing function. The raising of good pear-stocks re- 



