41 
namely, the natives cut down the larger specimens 
for their lumber, from which fine furniture is 
made, v/hile if a young tree occurs at a suitable 
place it is most times used as a stock for an im- 
proved variety of pear. 
We made a trip of three days to the K. W, 
from here to look at a very large specimen of a 
wild pear from v/hich a large village had ob- 
tained its name (T'ang li shu ya) but the tree 
had become old and had been cut down 40 to 50 
years already. It was said to measure something 
like 11 or 1? feet in circumference. The largest 
trunk I measured was 6 feet in circumference, but 
it v/as as a stock for an improved pear. 
The name of this wild pear is everywhere 
around here "T'ang li", meaning "Crab-apple -pear ", 
on account of the resemblance of its fruit to wild 
crab-apples f Mai us baccata ) . There is very much 
variation in the trees as regards appearance, 
pubescence of leaves, size of fruits and of flowers, 
etc. Some trees present a silvery-gray appearance 
while others are quite green. ?/hether all of these 
strains v/ill be equally immune to blight v/ill be 
an interesting problem to solve. 
This pear v/ill be of immense value as a s tock 
for the very greater part of the United States, but 
more especially so for those parts where the sum- 
mers are hot and the v/inters only moderately cold. 
As a factor in hybridization work it offers 
but little prospect since the fruits are ridiculous- 
ly small, often only of the size of a small choke- 
berry. (P yrus ussuriensis , however, offers much 
better promises for breeding work, that is, to ob- 
tain a hardy pear for cold regions, but as a stock 
it probably cannot be grown in regions where summer 
temperatures go high. Professor Reimer stated to 
me last September that the leaves of it got slightly 
scorched at Talent during a hot spell in July, I be- 
lieve. In China, to my knowledge, I have never 
seen a specimen of P. ussuriensis in a real hot 
part of the country; it alv/ays occurs tiere where the 
real Malu s baccata thrives and Juglans mandshurica , 
both of them plants that love relatively cool sum- 
mers, just like I do myself.) 
And now as regards collecting a large quantity 
of seeds of the wild calleryana pear, for which 
purpose I made this special l6 days' trip. Well, 
around Ichang itself there are too few trees and 
IDecember 31, 191?. 
