252 



The Canadian Horticulturist. 



N.Y., and was first noticed by Mr. Charles Green, of Rochester, some six 

 or seven years ago. The tree is a regular and heavy bearer, and the fruit 

 is very beautiful. It is a firm fruit, suitable for distant shipment, and 

 though gathered while yet hard, will ripen up to a golden color with a 

 bright red cheek. It is delicious to the taste, and edible to the very core. 

 While not a large pear, it is much larger than the Seckel, and its chief 

 merits are its earliness and great productiveness. Its time of ripening is 

 about the ist of August, a time when the market is bare of good pears, ^nd 

 anything fancy would bring a good price. 



The following description of the Wilder pear is given by Mr. Vandeman : 

 Size, small to medium ; shape, pyri-form, bell-shaped, irregular, a little 

 angular ; surface, smooth, pale yellow ground with deep shading of brownish 

 carmine ; dots very numerous and small ; basin, shallow, regular ; eye 

 nearly closed ; sepals long and reflexed ; apex rather abrupt, with a slight 

 cavity ; stem short ; core closed, very small ; seeds very small, narrow, 

 pointed, dark ; flesh very pale, whitish yellow, fine grained and tender ; 

 flavor, sub-acid, sprightly, much like Bartlett ; quality, very good ; season, 

 August, in Western New York. 



CAN STRAWBERRIES BE CONTINUOUSLY GROWN ON 

 THE SAME LAND WITH PROFIT? 



HAVE no doubt the reply from many would be : — Certainly they can ; 

 if the ground is kept in suitable condition. 



I have been growing strawberries for market for over forty years> 

 and have often tried renewal, but have never found it profitable. After 

 taking off" the second crop of fruit, I have summer fallowed, manured 

 heavily, and generally the following year have obtained a satisfactory crop 

 of roots, corn or potatoes, which left the land, as I long supposed, in the 

 very best condition for growing strawberries or any other small fruit. Yet 

 with me, the yield of the second planting has never been half as large as 

 that of the first ; hence I conclude that there must be some peculiar 

 element, mysteriously essential to the growth of the strawberry extracted 

 from the soil with the first heavy croppings, and that I do not know how to 

 replace it. 



In European gardens strawberries have for many generations been 

 grown as a rotation crop, and I have seen strawberry beds fifteen years old, 

 but it certainly could not be said that they were productive, although 

 luxuriant in foliage ; and this is what seems to me so remarkably strange — 

 plants can be grown well enough and as often as you please, but they do not 

 produce the fruit. 



