42 THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 
M. Endicott, a descendant of the Governor, in Hovey’s Magazine of Hor- 
ticulture, vol. xix, p. 254, June, 1853, from which the above account has 
been mainly derived. Each of these articles is illustrated with a cut of 
the pear. 
“The Orange Pear. This tree is owned by Capt. Charles H. Allen, 
and stands in his yard on Hardy street, Salem. The Rev. Dr. Bentley, 
who died about 1820, investigated the history of this tree and found it 
to be then 180 years old, which would make it now 235 years old. The 
trunk is hollow, nine feet five inches in circumference in the smallest part 
near the ground; just below the limbs it is several inches more. The tree 
is more than forty feet high, and the limbs are supported by shores. It 
was grafted in the limbs, as a branch fifteen or twenty years old, shooting 
out several feet higher than a man’s head, produces ‘ Button’ pears, and 
a large limb, part of which was ‘ Button’ which grew out still higher up, 
was blown off several years ago. In the very favorable pear season of 
1862 it bore thirteen and a half bushels of pears. It bears in alternate years, 
having produced eight and a half bushels in 1873. The brittleness of the 
limbs of old pear trees is well known, yet Capt. Allen, with a care worthy 
of imitation, gathers every pear, excepting about a dozen specimens, by 
hand. 
“This variety was, until the introduction of the modern kinds, highly 
esteemed. It is above medium size, averaging fifty-six pears to the peck, 
globular obtuse pyriform, covered with thin russet, jutcy when gathered 
early and ripened in the house; of pleasant flavor but rather deficient in 
this respect. It is ripe about the middle of September. It was considered 
by my father a native, and was called by him the American Orange, and 
after examination of the descriptions and plates, I cannot think it the same 
as the Orange Rouge or Orange d’Automne of Duhamel, Decaisne, and 
Leroy. The Hon. Paul Dudley, Esq., of Roxbury, in some ‘ Observations 
on some of the Plants in New England with remarkable Instances of the 
Power of Vegetation,’ communicated to the Royal Society of London (I 
quote from the ‘ Philosophical Transactions,’ abridged, London, 1734, 
Vol. VI, Part II, p. 341), says: ‘An Orange Pear Tree grows the largest, 
and yields the fairest fruit. I know one of them near forty Foot high, that 
measures six Foot and six Inches in Girt, a Yard from the Ground, and 
has borne thirty Bushels at a Time, and this Year I measured an Orange 
pear, that grew in my own Orchard, of eleven Inches round the Bulge.’ 
“If this is, as believed, of native origin, it is the oldest American fruit 
in cultivation, unless we except the Apple pear, which is probably of about 
the same date. This is small, oblate, of pale yellow color, ripening in August. 
It is quite distinct from the Poire Pomme d'Hiver, of Leroy, and I think 
also from the Poire Pomme d’Eté, of the same author. I had supposed 
the variety to be extinct, but last year discovered in a garden in Salem 
