224 THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 
URBANISTE 
1. Trans. Lond. Hort. Soc. §:411. 1824. 2. Lindley Guide Orch. Gard. 384. 1831. 3. Kenrick Am. 
Orch. 186. 1832. 4. Mag. Hort. 10:131, fig. 1844. 5. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 417, fig. 190. 1845. 
6. Gard. Chron. 68, fig. 1847. '7 Hovey Fr. Am. 2:21, Pl, 1851. 8. Am. Pom. Soc. Rpt. 53. 1852. 9. 
Pom. France. 1: No. 32, Pl. 32. 1863. 10. Mas Le Verger 3:Pt. 1, 193, fig.95. 1866-73. 11. Downing 
Fr. Trees Am. 871, fig. 1869. 12. Guide Prat. 59,308. 1876. 13. Hogg Fruit Man. 657. 1884. 
Urbanister Sdmling. 14. Dochnahl Fuhr. Obstkunde 2:116. 1856. 
Poire des Urbanistes. 15. Leroy Dict. Pom. 2:712, fig. 1869. 
Coloma’s Herbst Butterbirne. 16. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 197. 1889. 17. Lucas Tafelbirnen 109, fig. 
1894. 
Urbaniste is another variety desirable for home use because of its 
highly-flavored fruits—so sweet, rich, perfumed, and luscious as to be 
a natural sweetmeat. The fruits are of but medium size and not particu- 
larly handsome, but the taste excels the looks. The flesh is as tender, 
sweet, juicy, and as delicately perfumed as that of Seckel or White 
Doyenné, but with a distinct flavor and scent which give the fruits the 
added charm of individuality. The crop ripens in October, in a season 
when there are many other pears, but the fruits stand comparison with 
those of any other variety and are welcome additions to. the fruit-basket. 
The trees have several defects, chief of which is tardiness in coming in 
bearing, to remedy which grafting on the quince is recommended. They 
are also susceptible to blight, and are not as hardy as might be wished. 
Of all pears, the tree of this variety is one of the handsomest — clean and 
tidy, slender and graceful, yet robust and productive. Fruit and tree 
make this a valuable variety for home plantings. 
Urbaniste originated as a wilding in the gardens of the religious order 
of Urbanistes, Mechlin, Belgium. After the suppression of this order in 
1783, their gardens remained uncultivated for some time and produced 
new seedlings of considerable merit. The beauty of one of these attracted 
the attention of Count de Coloma, a well-known pomologist, who acquired 
this property in 1786, and in due course propagated and disseminated the 
variety under the name Urbaniste. Early in the nineteenth century, 
Count de Coloma sent specimens of the pear to the London Horticultural 
Society, which organization afterwards distributed it in England about 1823. 
Thomas Andrew Knight sent cions to John Lowell, Roxbury, Massachusetts, 
through whom it became disseminated in the United States. The Ameri- 
can Pomological Society added Urbaniste to its fruit-catalog list in 1852. 
Tree medium in size, vigorous, upright-spreading, slow-growing, productive with age; 
trunk slender, shaggy; branches stocky, shaggy, zigzag, reddish-brown, overspread with 
