lection. In our country, however, the method introduced by Mr. Knight of obtaining new kinds by means of hybridisation or cross breeding, which is far less tedious, and in which, too, the result can be prognosticated with some degree of accuracy, has been attended with so much success that there has been little temptation to resort to any other. Of course when fine kinds are once obtained, by whatever means they may have been produced, nothing more is needed to perpetuate them than to continue their propagation to any extent by grafting; and as with regard to the hardier kinds at least Loudon assures us that the best pears can be grown with no more trouble and expense than inferior ones, it is to be hoped that eventually the former will quite supersede the latter, and what is still too exclusively a luxury for the wealthy at length be freely open to all classes.
So much attention having been directed to the multiplication of varieties, it is not surprising that they should now be very numerous, and though there are still not above twenty or thirty pears which are reckoned really first-class, Dochnahl's recent work describes above 1050, and the Bon Jardinier, the chief French horticultural periodical, says that the catalogue in that country now comprises 3000 varieties, each of which, too, has about six synonyms. Attempts have been made to classify these multitudinous races into families, but no very satisfactory arrangement has yet been achieved, and the only classification in use in England is that which divides them into summer, autumn, and winter pears, with the further distinction into the very soft or melting pears (in French beurées), the crisper or breaking pairs (crevers), and the perry (poirée) and baking fruits. According to their forms they are described as pyriform, like the old Windsor; oblate, like the Bergamot; obovate, like the Swan's Egg; or pyramidal when the lines extend upwards nearly uncurved from the broad base.
Many of our old sorts are extinct, and others are doomed to the same fate, for even the popular Swan's Egg is pronounced by eminent horticulturalists to be not worth cultivating in comparison with the more modern sorts; but a few are still welcome to our palates as ever they were to preceding generations, for far from superseded is our common Bergamot, long as great a favourite among English pears as the Ribstone Pippin among apples. Nothing authentic is known of its origin but its antiquity is undoubted, and according to Manger the name is not derived from Bergamo in Italy, as many have supposed, but from the Turkish word beg or bey, a prince, and armoud, a pear, and was formerly written Begarmoud, the natural inference being that it originated in a warmer climate than that of Europe, and was introduced here from Turkey. It is to the French that we have owed most of our good older kinds, for they seem to have had the start of us in pear culture, since good sorts were known in France as early as in the thirteenth century. Foremost among our old fruits thence derived stands the Jargonelle, long since pronounced to be the queen of autumn pears, and which, still scarcely surpassed in flavour and quite unequalled in productiveness by any of her contemporaries of that season, seems hardly likely to be called on to abdicate her throne in favour of upstart modern rivals. This fruit consists literally of little more than eau sucrée enclosed in a rind, the analysis of De Candolle showing that when ripe it contains 83·88 per cent. of water and 11·52 per cent, of sugar. Though we owe both the fruit and its title to France, by some strange contretemps the name is there given to a quite different kind, while our Jargonelle is called by the extraordinary appellation of Grosse Cuisse Madame, or Great Ladies' Thighs. The German name, Frauen Schenkel, has the same meaning.
The Bon Chrétien is another ancient variety still as highly in repute as ever, both here and in its native France. It has many sub-varieties, one of the commonest in England being the William's Bon Chrétien, often called merely the William Pear. Of the Flemish pears more lately introduced into this country, one of the chief in beauty and flavour, scarcely owning a superior, is the Marie Louise, the tree of which is, too, so hardy that it affords an almost certain crop under the most unfavourable circumstances. Other noted Flemish pears are the Beurré Rance, a misnomer for Ranz, its name being borrowed from the district in Flanders where it first grew; and the Glou morceau, so called from a Walloon word equivalent to the French friand, the title meaning therefore delicious morsel or bit.
Among the Germans the pear is more prized at the dessert than almost any other fruit, but the one which ranks highest there, and which may indeed be called their national fruit, as it originated in Germany, is the pretty Forelle, Truite, or Trout Pear, so named from a fancied resemblance between its speckled skin and that of the fish.
In America many of the pears of Europe are grown, but are rated at a much lower standard than on this continent, the Jargonelle, though very common, being looked on as a poor fruit, and even the Marie Louise and Bon Chrétien as but second rate; for, as in the case