THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 85 
now surpass Kieffer in number of trees. Clapp Favorite, Beurré d’ Anjou, 
Beurré Bosc, Beurré Clairgeau, Duchesse d’ Angouléme, Howell, Lawrence, 
Sheldon, Vermont Beauty, and Winter Nelis are all planted more or less 
in commercial orchards, and are the favorites for home use. All of these 
varieties are susceptible to blight, are a little too tender to cold, and have 
other faults of tree and fruit, so that pear-growers in New York anxiously 
look forward to better varieties. It is hardly too much to say that pear- 
growing can never become a great industry in New York until better varieties 
take the place of the unreliable sorts that must be planted now. 
To some extent, man-governed agencies determine where pears may 
be grown profitably if the planter is growing for the markets. Pears do 
not keep long and are easily bruised, and transportation must not take 
too great toll; therefore, handling facilities must be suitable, markets must 
not be distant, and transportation must be cheap and efficient. But in 
the culture of this fruit, natural agencies outrank those depending on man, 
two of which determine very largely where pears are to be grown 
commercially in both the country and the state. These two, climate and 
soil, have been mentioned before, but must now be discussed somewhat in 
detail. 
CLIMATE 
The ideal climate for a cultivated plant is one in which the plant 
thrives as an escape from cultivation wholly independent of care 
from man. The apple, cherry, plum, and peach are often found wild in 
one or another part of America, but the pear almost never. The pear 
does not naturally become inured to the American climate, and in the 
orchard is not well acclimated even in the varieties which have originated 
in the country. In particular, as a young tree and until well advanced 
toward maturity, the pear shows the bad effects of maladjustment to 
climate, but as an old tree it seems to be far less susceptible to the 
extremes of climate to which fruit trees are subjected in most parts of 
America. Both of the two chief constituents of climate, temperature and 
rainfall, are determinants of regions and sites in pear-growing. 
Extremes in temperature, more particularly of cold, are the only 
phases of temperature that pear-growers need consider in New York. 
The pear is not nearly as hardy as the apple, and Bartlett, the foremost 
variety in the State, is almost as tender to cold as the peach. The limits 
of commercial pear-culture are set in this State by the winter climate. 
The pear cannot be grown profitably where the temperature often falls 
