206 
THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
THE PEAR AND ITS VARIETIES. 
(Continued from 'page 187.) 
BALOSSE,— Lir d’Air. 
Identification. —Liron d’Air. Notices Pom. iii. 8. 
Fruit 2£ inches long and the same in diameter, roundish turbinate. Skin 
rough, thick, of a dark green colour, shaded with brown, but as it ripens it 
becomes yellow, and is then coloured with red. Eye large and open, with 
long leafy segments, set in a wide and rather shallow basin. Stalk an inch 
long, slender, and woody, attached without depression, and with a fleshy 
swelling on one side of it. Flesh yellow, crisp, sugary, and perfumed. 
A cooking Pear, grown extensively in the neighbourhood of Chalons-sur- 
Marne, where it has been cultivated for nearly three centuries as the great 
resource of the farming and working class. It is an excellent Pear when 
cooked, and keeps remarkably well till March, when in some seasons it may be 
used in the dessert. 
The tree is an immense bearer, one tree producing, on an average, twenty- 
four bushels of fruit. 
BARLAND.— Knight . 
Identification. —Pom. Heref. t. 27. Lindl. Guide 414. Hort. Soc. Cat. ed. 3. n. 29. 
Figure. —Pom. Heref. t. 27. 
Fruit small and obovate. Skin dull green, considerably covered with 
grey russet. Eye large and open, with erect ‘segments, and placed even with 
the surface, and without any depression. Stalk half an inch long, and slender. 
This is a very fine old perry Pear. The specific gravity of its juice is 
according to Mr. Knight, 1070. 
Mr. Knight says: “ Many thousand hogsheads of perry are made from this 
fruit in a productive season; but the perry is not so much approved by the 
present, as it was by the original planters. It, 
however, sells well, whilst new, to the mer¬ 
chants, who have probably some means of 
employing it with which the public are not 
acquainted ; for I have never met with it more 
than once, within the last twenty j^ears, out of 
the districts in which it is made ; and many of 
the Herefordshire planters have applied to me 
in vain for information respecting its disap¬ 
pearance. It may be mingled in considerable 
quantity with strong and new port, without its 
taste being perceptible; and as it is compara¬ 
tively cheap, it possibly sometimes contributes 
one of the numerous ingredients of that popular 
compound.” 
“The Barland Pear appears to have been 
extensively cultivated in Herefordshire prior to 
the publication of Evelyn’s “Pomona,” in 1674, 
in which it is very frequently mentioned; and 
as no trees of this variety are found in decay 
from age, in favourable soils, it must be con¬ 
cluded that the identical trees which were growing when Evelyn wrote still 
remain in health and vigour.” 
“ The original tree grew in a field called the Bare Lands , in the parish of 
Bosbury, whence the variety obtained its name, and it was blown down a few 
years ago.” 
