No. 151.] 457 



digenous to any part of Europe, modern writers differ in opinion. 

 Pliny states that it did not exist in Italy till after the victory which 

 Lucullus won over Mithridates, King of Pontus, 68 years B. C. He 

 tells us that, " In 26 years after Lucullus planted the cherry-tree, in 

 Italy, other lands had cherries, even as far as Britain, beyond the 

 ocean." According to Abbe Rosier, Lucullus brought into Italy only 

 two superior varieties of cherry; the species which were the origia 

 of all those now in cultivation, being, before his time, indigen- 

 ous to Italy, and the forests of France, though their fruit was ne- 

 glected by the Romans. At present, however, the common cherry is 

 no where found in an apparestly wild state, in any part of Europe, 

 or America, except near human habitations. 



The Pear. 



The Common Pear {Pyrus communip,) is indigenous to Europe, 

 Western Asia, the Himalayas, and to China; but not to Africa nor 

 America. Professor De Candolle describes two forms of the wild 

 species, comparatively permanent, from which all of our cultivated 

 varieties have been derived. The earliest writers mention the pear 

 as growing abundantly in Syria, Egypt, and in Greece; and it ap- 

 pears to have been brought into Italy from these places about the 

 time that Sylla made himself master of the last named country, al- 

 though there is but little doubt that the Romans had several kinds of 

 this fruit long before his time. 



Among the trees which Homer describes as forming the orchard of 

 Laertes, the father of Ulysses, we find the pear. Theophrastus speaks 

 of the productiveness of old pear-trees, the truth of which is verified 

 by the trees of the present day. Pliny describes the varieties in cul- 

 tivation in his time, as being exceedingly numerous, and says that a 

 fermented liquor was made of the expressed juice; and Virgil men- 

 tions some pears which he received from Cato. According to Pow- 

 nell, the pear was imported into Marseilles by the Phoceean colonists, 

 sometime during the middle ages. 



The cultivated varieties of the common pear succeed both in the 

 temperate and transition zones of the two hemispheres; and it is re- 

 markable that this tree will perfect its fruit within the verge of the 

 tropics, when grown at a proper elevation above the sea, at about 

 the same period of the year as in Europe and the United States. 



