THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 233 
ables. They are small or of but medium size, with straggling, wayward 
tops with habits of growth so self assertive that no art nor skill of the 
pruner can bring the branches under control. The limbs are always crooked; 
some bend inward toward the main stem, some are upright, some droop, 
and no two behave in quite the same way. Notwithstanding the illy- 
shaped tops, the trees are often enormously productive so that the crop 
usually requires thinning. They bear almost annually; come in bearing 
young; are fairly hardy; and are adapted to almost any soil or situation 
provided, only, that the soil is fertile or well fertilized. They are as nearly 
immune to blight as those of any other European pear. The trees are 
characterized by two marked peculiarities: the old wood is thickly set 
with small, short spurs; and they are about the latest of all their kind in 
leafing out in the spring. There is no better winter pear for either the 
commercial pear-grower or the amateur, and the variety grows especially 
well in New York. 
Winter Nelis was raised from seed by Jean Charles Nélis, Mechlin, 
Belgium, early in the nineteenth century. It was introduced into England 
by the London Horticultural Society under the name La Bonne Mali- 
noise. Subsequently this name was cancelled and that of Winter Nelis 
adopted, the name which had been given the variety by Van Mons in honor 
of the originator. In 1823, Thomas Andrew Knight, President of the 
London Horticultural Society, sent cions of the variety to John Lowell, 
Roxbury, Massachusetts, who, in his turn, shared them with Robert 
Manning, Salem, Massachusetts, whence the sort was very generally 
disseminated in this country and attained great popularity. At the 
National Convention of Fruit-Growers held in New York in 1848, Winter 
Nelis was included in a short list of pears recommended for general culti- 
vation. For more than half a century the name has appeared in the fruit- 
catalogs of the American Pomological Society. 2 
Tree medium in size and vigor, spreading, hardy, very productive; trunk stocky; 
branches thick, zigzag, reddish-brown mingled with gray scarf-skin, marked: with small 
lenticels; branchlets with short internodes, reddish-brown, dull, smooth, glabrous, with 
numerous raised, conspicuous lenticels. 
Leaf-buds medium to large, long, conical or pointed, free. Leaves 3 in. long, 1} in. 
wide, elongated-oval, leathery; apex taper-pointed; margin varies from crenate to serrate; 
petiole 1} in. long, slender. Flower-buds conical or pointed, free; flowers open late, 13 
in. across, 6 or 7 buds in a cluster; pedicels 7 in. long, rather slender, lightly pubescent, 
greenish. 
Fruit ripe late November to early January; medium in size, 2% in. long, about 23 in. 
