CHAPTER XX. 



CHINESE SAND PEAES. 



All over the Xorth, wherever pears are grown, there has of 

 late years prevailed a dire disease, mysterious in its cause, mysteri- 

 ous as to its remedies, and plain and certain only in one respect, 

 that of the destruction of pear-growing as a profitable market 

 fiuit. Whole orchards of thousands and tens of thousands of 

 trees have gone down before the dread disease, and their owners 

 have abandoned the pear-growing business in despair. 



For years it seemed as if this delicious fruit must be num- 

 bered among the things of the past, but for the advent of that 

 for which our horticulturists had been largely hoping, an entire 

 new race of pears, with all the health and vigor of the wonder- 

 ful pears of China, and free from the dreaded blight " and all 

 other diseases so destructive to those which may now be termed 

 our native varieties. 



In China the pear trees reckon their lives by as many 

 centuries, as ours by decades, and are never attacked by disease. 



This sturdy race of pears has been acclimated in the United 

 States by half a century of trial, and in all that time not 

 a single Chinese pear has been touched by blight, or any other 

 disease. 



.Happily it has also been shown that these pears, unlike the 

 majority of the more familiar sorts, have been proved to be 

 especially adapted to the Southern States, particularly to Geor- 

 gia and Florida. 



As yet there are not many varieties of these pears, all of the 

 sand pears now on the market ha™g sprung from the original 

 Le Conte, but this is a fault that will soon be mended, for all 

 ever the land enterprising horticulturists are experimenting 

 in hybridizing the China sand pears with our old valued varie- 

 ties ; that is, taking the pollen fr'om the blossoms of our best 

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