842 
AMERICAN AGRICUlLTURISn 
costs no more to rear and keep a good horse 
than a bad one ; while their relative capaci¬ 
ty for service can scarcely be estimated. 
I saw when I was abroad, the horses of 
France, and found they had, among others, 
a middling-sized racer, remarkable for tough¬ 
ness and condition, which are easily main¬ 
tained ; but to improve their breeds the gov¬ 
ernment makes constant draughts upon the 
English thoroughbreds. 
Now, we have no need to go abroad for 
this kind of stock. As a general rule our 
roadsters are much better than the English, 
and the stories about twelve miles an hour in 
post-chaises, as an ordinary pace, are not to 
be credited. 
I found, when in England, that the rate of 
speed depended upon the roads. From 
Southampton to London you may easily go 
at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour; 
but it took four beautiful bays two full hours 
to transport myself and lour others in a 
light carriage without luggage, from Dover 
to Canterbury, a distance of only eighteen 
miles ; and I bribed the Post Boys “ at that," 
holding my watch to see what English hor¬ 
ses could do on a hilly road. 
Between Hastings and Brighton, over the 
sandy downs and wolds of Sussex, two 
horses in the same carriage, with only three 
persons in it, could hardly average five and 
a half miles the hour; while 1 was once 
taken with a party, without notice to the 
proprietors, or preparation on their part, in 
a common stage coach, weighing 1,800lbs., 
from Rochester to Lockport by the way of 
Lake Ontario, a distance of 63 miles, in seven 
hours, with ease. 
I “ timed ” the race-horses of England at 
Goodwood and at Newmarket; comparing 
horses, weights and distances with our own, 
and came to the conclusion, that their cours¬ 
ers are not superior to those of America ; 
while in sailing, all the world knows we can 
beat their yachts and ships to death. 
No! gentlemen, you have only to look 
about—use the elements within your grasp, 
and the trotters and gallopers of Rhode-Island 
may be as famous in time to come, as the 
pacers of Narragansett once were. 
There is a Jackson Morgan in Newport, 
that may yet rival the famous Old Snip, who, 
it is said, when pacing his match over a 
a certain road, with a bridge twelve feet wide 
across it, was never known to touch that 
bridge with his foot! 
He was caught wild, as the rep@rt goes, 
on the Narragansett shore, and wasevident- 
ly a descendant of those Andalusian Barbs, 
which the Spaniards carried to Cuba, and 
which our officers probably brought from 
that Island upon the return of the ill-fated 
expedition against it in 1741. 
And if you rear horses, farmers of Rhode- 
Island, be sure that you keep them well 
when young. 
The stories of Arab colts, fed until their 
fourth year upon camel’s milk, are a perfect 
delusion; animal life can not be sustained, 
expanded and developed, except by food, and 
that bestowed by no sparing hand. 
Mr. Burckhardt, the only man who ever 
traveled in Syria, Mesopotamia and Arabia, 
with a competent knowledge of the lan¬ 
guages there used, is the author upon whom 
I rely in this particular, and he says, “ it is a 
general but erroneous opinion that Arabia is 
very rich in horses ; but the breed is limited 
to the extent of fertile pasture grounds in 
that country, and it is in such parts only that 
horses thrive, while those Bedouins who 
occupy districts of poor soil rarely possess 
any horses.” 
“ It is found accordingly, that the tribes, 
rich in horses, are those who dwell in the 
comparatively fertile plains of Mesopotamia 
on the banks of the river Euphrates and in 
the Syrian plain.” 
“ Horses can there feed for several of the 
spring months upon the green grass and 
herbs produced by the rains in the valleys 
and fertile grounds, and such food seems 
absolutely necessary for promoting the full 
growth of the horse.” 
“ The best pasturage places of Arabia not 
only produce the greatest number of horses, 
but likewise the finest and most select race.” 
Certainly this must be so, and common 
sense teaches what Burckhardt expressly 
asserts. If you will redeem your former 
fame in this regard, farmers of Rhode-Island, 
I will for the present take leave of the horse. 
0rfmtltttral geprtnmti 
PEAR CULTURE. 
NUMBER 1. 
We are going to discuss pear culture pret¬ 
ty much as General Jackson discussed the 
Constitution—“ as we understand it ” ; for 
with all the invitations which we have at' 
various and sundry times made to our friends 
and readers, to give us their observations on 
the subject, we have, thus far, only been met 
with a plentiful lack of information. Pears 
are not only the best of the permanent fruits 
which we of the northern States raise, when 
in their perfection, but the scarcest, also ; 
and those with which their cultivators have 
met the most formidable difficulties in the 
various diseases to which the trees are sub¬ 
ject, and in the obstacles which they have to 
encounter. True, the nurserymen tell a dif¬ 
ferent story, and which story the public have 
believed, as the fortunes which the aforesaid 
nurserymen have rrfade in the propagation 
and sale within the last dozen years will tes¬ 
tify ; but from the studied silence of those 
who have purchased their trees, and the 
bare fruit-stalls of our public markets in the 
show of the pears themselves, we fancy an¬ 
other sort of tale is to be told by the culti¬ 
vators. 
Now, gentlemen of the nurseries, take no 
umbrage at what we have said or are about 
to say, for we are your very good friends, 
as we trust you are ours, for the propaga¬ 
tion and rearing of young trees is a very 
different thing from orchard culture after¬ 
wards ; and although you have done much 
good in the world, and will do a great deal 
more, we trust, before you have done with 
it, the drift of what we have to say, if heeded, 
may enable you to effect a much greater 
good in your future labors. We think there 
are existing errors in the sweeping rules 
which are laid down in the books for pear 
cultivation ; and these books, one and all, 
that we know of, by American authors, are 
written by nurserymen. Not that we doubt 
that the rules laid down for cultivation by 
you are correct, so far as fortified by your 
observation, but that that observation is too 
limited in range for the guidance of cultiva¬ 
tors to any considerable extent on the farm. 
Let us look at it. 
For the better understanding of what we 
have to say, we shall divide our subject into 
two separate parts, viz : that of pears upon 
their own individual stocks ; and that of 
pearson the quince, and confine our remarks 
to the cultivation of the trees themselves, 
and not to the merits of the particular varie¬ 
ties of the fruit—although of these we may 
have something to say hereafter. 
All of us who have paid any attention to 
fruit culture have vivid recollections of old 
pear trees standing in somebody-or-other’s 
orchard, in our boyhood—great, strong, 
healthy, vigorous, old trees, which bore 
quantities of fruit, which we, in our boyish 
appetites, called good. Whether we should 
now call them so is another question. But 
the fact that the trees existed, as we state, 
and that many of them yet exist in health 
and vigor, will not be disputed. Those trees 
were chiefly wildings, or natural stocks ; and 
if grafted with the better kinds of pear at all, 
were so grafted at, or near, the branching 
point, above or below. Nor will any of us 
remember that those trees had any particu¬ 
lar cultivation; usually standing, when in 
orchards, with other trees, or near a fence, 
or in the garden, or by the side of an out¬ 
house, or in the door-yard. It is also a fact 
that there still exist, in the old French towns 
of Illinois, and in the old French settlements 
along the Detroit river, pear trees of im¬ 
mense size, and along the Niagara also, but 
less than on the Detroit, which annually 
yield, with no cultivation whatever, great 
quantities of fruit; some of them even fifty 
bushels to a tree, at a single crop. These 
old French trees are more than a hundred 
years old ; and from what we know of the 
habits of the early settlers who planted them, 
it is quite certain that they never had any 
careful cultivation. The pursuits of those 
early settlers were chiefly hunting, trapping, 
and fishing, and their agriculture was of the 
rudest kind, and they had orchards of apples 
as well as pears ; but the fruits were of the 
wild or natural kinds, as the remaining spe¬ 
cimens show. The Illinois trees w^e have 
not seen ; but the others we have seen; 
and the soil around many of the most fruit¬ 
ful of them is in a sadly neglected state— 
bound down in grass, mowed, and pastured, 
or occasionally plowed, and carelessly at 
that, with poorly-tended crops upon it. So 
is the usage of the soil in many other places, 
in New-England, New-York, New-Jersey, 
and Pennsylvania, where such trees yet re¬ 
main in undiminished health and vigor. 
Many trees cotemporary with these have, 
doubtless, died from disease, neglect, and 
hardship of various kinds; but after all, the 
old standing trees tell the story, that our 
country is friendly to the pear in its natural 
state ; and we can readily draw the infer¬ 
ence that they may still be cultivated as well 
as ever, if the seeds of premature decay, by 
disease, or inherent weakness, be not worked 
into the constitution of the tree itself, in its 
infancy. 
So much for the natural stock of the pear. 
Now let us look at the nursery cultivation 
of the improved varieties, or the finer kinds 
of table pears, which, after all, to the present 
refined tastes, are the only kinds w r orth 
propagating. With the exception of a few 
really good native American pears, for the 
production of which we are indebted to 
chance or accident, our finest varieties are 
chiefly of English, French, or Belgian origin. 
