180 



On a new Variety of Pear. 



and therefore, as feeble causes, which are constantly ope- 

 rating, ultimately produce very extensive effects on the habits 

 of mankind, I am inclined to hope, and to believe, that mar- 

 kets abundantly supplied, at all seasons, with fruits, would 

 have a tendency to operate* favourably, both on the physical 

 and moral health of our people. 



Under these considerations, I have amused myself with 

 attempts to form new varieties of winter Pears ; and though 

 my experiments are yet in their infancy, and I have seen the 

 result of one only, and that under very unfavourable circum- 

 stances, I am induced to state the progress that I have made, 

 to the Horticultural Society, in the hope that others will 

 join me in the same pursuit. 



In the spring of the year 1797, I extracted the stamina 

 from the blossoms of a young and vigorous tree of the Au- 

 tumn Bergamot Pear, which grew in a very rich soil, and I 

 introduced, at the proper subsequent period, the pollen of 

 the St. Germain Pear, and from this experiment I obtained 

 several fruits with ripe seeds. I, however, succeeded in rais- 

 ing only two plants, one of these was feeble and dwarfish in 

 its growth, as well as wild and thorny in its appearance, and 

 I did not think it worth preserving. • The other presented a 

 much more favourable character, and I fancied that I could 

 discover in it some traces of the features of its male parent. 

 This plant afforded blossoms in the spring of 1808, but I 

 had very unfortunately removed it from the seed-bed, when 

 it was fourteen feet high, in the preceding winter, and as it 

 had never been previously transplanted, it had retained but 

 very few roots. Two of the blossoms, nevertheless, afforded 

 fruit ; which began to grow with rapidity as soon as the tree 



