302 HORTICULTURAL TOUR. 



passed a eulogium on Edinburgh as a seat of learning, and 

 was particularly warm in the praises of Dr John Murray, 

 both as an analyst and as an expounder of die theoretical 

 doctrines of chemistry. He was much pleased, therefore, 

 to find, that we were intimately acquainted with this dis- 

 tinguished chemist *, and that one of us had even been his 

 schoolfellow. 



He mentioned, that horticulture had been the favourite 

 employment of his hours of relaxation for fourteen years 

 past, and that he had, during that period, raised several 

 hundreds of new pears, besides a good many apples, plums, 

 cherries, and peaches, — all possessed of qualities so good or 

 so promising, as to make it desirable to preserve the varie- 

 ties. Of new seedling varieties of good pears, raised chiefly 

 by himself and by M. Duquesne of Mons, he considers 

 his present collection as extending to about 800 ! This 

 number so greatly startled us, that at first we imagined he 

 meant that he possessed 800 specimens, or young plants, of 

 the new kinds deemed worthy of being propagated by graft- 

 ing. These new kinds, we supposed, might perhaps amount 

 to two or three dozen. But on putting the question dis- 

 tinctly, we found his meaning to be, that about 800 out of 

 perhaps as many thousands of the new varieties raised by 

 him and others from the seed, have proved worthy of pre- 

 servation. 



We had an opportunity of tasting the fruit of a few of 

 these new pears ; and, making allowance for their being late 

 pears, and consequently not exactly in season, they seemed 

 to ih excellent, superior indeed to any we had seen on the 

 Continent, scarcely excepting the Poire Madame and the 

 Jut. The former of these, it may be noticed, is a summer 



• Dr Murray has since died ; in June 1820. 



