52 INFLUENCE OF CULTURE. 



INFLUENCE OF CULTURE. 



The effect of keeping the soil mellow by repeated stirring, 

 on most of the finer and delicious fruits, can be hardly be- 

 lieved by those who have only seen it on the more common 

 varieties of the apple. "No stunted tree bears fine fruit, 

 Even the Seckel pear, of all sorts the highest flavored, is so 

 inferior in some situations, as to be scarcely worth gathering. 

 Some other pears, however, lose their distinguishing traits 

 entirely, and bear nothing suitable for human lips. Of this 

 class has been the St. Ghislain in my grounds, where the 

 tree stood neglected for several years, and caused me to 

 wonder how any thing so insipid could have passed through 

 the hands of Eobert Manning. Yet that eminent and worthy 

 pomologist was not to blame. An accidental improvement 

 of its condition, caused it the last season to bear excellent 

 fruit, increased some in size, but immensely in flavor. 



" It would seem that flavor is the last touch of perfection 

 that some pears receive ; and that if the nourishment of the 

 tree be exhausted with their growth, so that nothing is left 

 for the last finish, they are tasteless and worthless. This is 

 not the case however with all sorts of fruit ; and exceptions 

 may be found in the Madeleine, Seckel, and Virgalieu; but 

 I think we have no right to condemn any variety of the 

 pear, until the tree has done its best — that is, borne fruit in 

 a thriving condition."* 



"No estimate," says Samuel Walker, " can be made of 

 the true character of any fruit, more particularly of the 

 pear, unless the specimens are fair, well grown, of full 

 size, and quite ripe : or, in other words, in the highest state 

 of perfection the variety will attain under the most skilful 

 management and favorable season. Some varieties, under 

 the care of a lover of fruits, well cultivated in a congenial 

 soil, may be compared to ' refined gold,' while the same 

 variety in unskilful hands, the trees neglected, in grass 

 land, or in wet and impoverished soil, may prove as ' dross.' " 



with great success, and is there regarded as the most valuable of all known pears, 

 an interesting example occurred the past season in the garden of Dr. Wendell of 

 Albany, where trees of tins variety, in soils of different qualities exhibited ail the 

 grades of difference from blighted and worthless fruit, to rich golden specimens. 

 Further evidence on this subject is furnished by the fact that the Beurre Diel and 

 other sorts of quite recent origin, have in unfavorable localities already exhibited the 

 cracked and blighted appearance falsely ascribed to old age. 



* David Thomas, in Ohio Cultivator, 1S45, p. 0. 



