[1] The Odyssey, Book VII. Translated by S. H. Butcher and A. Lang.

[2] Pliny Nat. Hist. XV: 15. From a translation made for the writer by Professor H. H. Yeames; Hobart College, Geneva, N. Y.

[3] Goderonne: From godron, a sculptural ornament having the shape of an elongated egg.

[4] Cordus, Valerius Hist. Pl. 3:176-182. 1561.

The writer is indebted to Professor H. H. Yeames, Hobart College, Geneva, N. Y., for the translation of this chapter from the original text.

[5] A Hist. of Gard. in Eng. 35-37. 1910.

[6] Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections 1st Ser. 1:118.

[7] Mass. Records 1:24.

[8] Mass. Hist. Collections 3d Ser. 23:337.

[9] Hist. Mass. Hort. Soc. p. 16. 1829-1878.

[10] Report of Me. Pom. Soc. 7:1873.

[11] Prince, William Cat. 1771.

[12] For a brief account of the life and work of John Bartram, see The Grapes of New York, page 97.

[13] For an account of the life and work of Coxe, see The Peaches of New York, page 254.

[14] For an account of the life and work of Budd, see The Plums of New York, page 145.

[15] Rehder, Alfred Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts & Sci. 50:228. 1915.

[16] Wilson, E. H. Jour. Inter. Gar. Club 598. 1918.

[17] Galloway, B. T. Jour. Her. 11:29. 1920.

[18] Rehder, Alfred Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts & Sci. 50:237. 1915.

[19] Reimer, F. C. Bull. Com. Hort. Calif. 5:167-172. 1916.

[20] Galloway, B. T. Jour. Her. 11:32. 1920.

[21] Reimer, F. C. Reprint from 1916 annual report of Pacific Coast Association of Nurserymen, 7. 1916.

[22] Some very good preliminary work on harvesting and storing pears has been done by the Oregon Experiment Station, and is reported in Bulletin 154, June, 1918, from that Station.

[23] For costs and profits in growing apples see Bulletin 376, New York Agricultural Experiment Station.

[24] Hesler and Whetzel. Manual of Fruit Diseases 330-331. 1917.

[25] Marshall P. Wilder contributed to all fields of American horticulture as an ardent amateur grower and as a most generous patron. But it was as a pomologist and especially as a grower of grapes and pears that he established a permanent place for himself in the horticulture of the country. He was born in New Hampshire in 1798 and died in Boston in 1886, having lived in Dorchester, a suburb of Boston, for upwards of a half century. By vocation a merchant, he was a captain of industry in his day, yet most of his life, especially after the prime had been passed, was devoted to the avocation of horticulture. He was one of the founders of the American Pomological Society and had the great honor of being its president, excepting a single two-year term, from the first meeting in 1850 until his death. During the last years of his presidency, Wilder actively engaged in the reform of pomological nomenclature which the Society was then carrying on. He was an active member of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society for fifty-six years and its president from 1841 to 1848. He was also one of the founders of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, of the Massachusetts Agricultural Society, of the United States Agricultural Society, and was a trustee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Besides membership and activity in these agricultural organizations, he served as colonel and commander in a military company and as president of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society from 1868 until his death. Wilder was a zealous collector and introducer of flowers. He specialized in camellias, azaleas, orchids, and roses. A rose bearing his name is still a garden favorite. Many floral novelties of his day owe their origin or introduction to Marshall P. Wilder. He was ever enthusiastic over American grapes and tested all of the many new varieties introduced about the middle of the last century. But the pear was even more to his fancy than the grape, and he endeavored to grow every native variety of any promise whatsoever. All told, he tested over 1200 varieties, and in 1873 exhibited more than 400 varieties. He originated several new pears and to him is due the honor of having introduced the Beurre d’Anjou in 1844. At his death he left the American Pomological Society $1000 for Wilder medals for new fruits and $4000 for general purposes. To the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, he left $1000 to encourage the introduction of new American pears and grapes. Among many distinguished American pomologists who sought to improve the pear, Marshall P. Wilder deserves most of any recognition for his services and a place is therefore accorded him for his likeness in the frontispiece of The Pears of New York and the book is thereby dedicated to him.

[26] The name is spelled by many writers BeurrÉ d’Aremberg.

[27] General Henry Alexander Scammell Dearborn, who followed the vocation of a soldier, statesman, and author, chose as his avocation horticulture and in several of its fields became eminent. A native of New England (1783-1851), son of General Henry Dearborn of Revolutionary fame, he was early educated to the profession of law and pursued that vocation until the war with Great Britain in 1812. Services in this war brought him the rank and title of general. After the war he served as Collector of the Port of Boston, in Congress, and as Mayor of Roxbury, Massachusetts, which office he held at the time of his death. But it is as a patron, friend, and lover of horticulture that the life and work of General Dearborn interest pomologists. He was one of the charter members in the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and a prime mover in its organization. He was elected its first president March 17, 1829. In the history of the Society published in 1880, of all the famous members of this truly remarkable organization, General Dearborn’s portrait was chosen for the frontispiece. He was early interested in experimental gardens and rural cemeteries. The plans for experimental gardens advocated by him were never fully carried out, but no doubt his enthusiasm for such gardens, with his own garden as a model, did much to stimulate the planting in America in the early half of the nineteenth century of the many famous gardens which adorned and enriched every center of culture along the Atlantic seaboard. He helped to establish the Mount Auburn and Forest Hills cemeteries, famous among Boston cemeteries, and the first of rural cemeteries in this country. His life-long devotion to rural art as exemplified in gardens and cemeteries knew no bounds. On these subjects and on pomology he contributed many articles to the agricultural and horticultural papers of his time. Few men, it can be said, could better concentrate their thoughts and feelings on paper than he seems to have done. Besides the many papers from his own pen he published several translated treatises from the French, chief of which was a monograph on the Camellia in 1838 and another on Morus multicaulis in 1830, the "Mulberry Craze" being in full swing at this time. General Dearborn was an ardent pear-grower and helped to test the hundreds of seedlings then being brought from Belgium and France and grew as well considerable numbers from his own seed-beds. Of all his seedlings, however, only Dearborn survives.

[28] The fame of Robert Manning as an accurate and discriminating American pomologist will long endure. Few Americans, one conceives, as his life is reviewed, have rendered greater service in any field of the nation’s agriculture. The quantity of his work was not remarkably large, but the quality was superfine. Systematic pomology in particular owes him much for his painstaking descriptions of fruits, and his corrections in nomenclature. Born in Salem, Mass., July 18, 1784, he made the town of his birth famous as a pomological center in America, where, at the time of his death, October 10, 1842, his garden probably contained a larger collection of fruits than had ever before been brought together in America. Manning began collecting fruits in 1823 when he established his "Pomological Garden" at Salem for the purpose of introducing and testing new varieties of fruits. He attempted to bring together all of the varieties of fruits that would thrive in eastern Massachusetts, and when his garden was fullest had about 2000 fruits, of which 1000 kinds were pears, to which fruit he gave most attention. He had many English, French, and Belgian correspondents from whom he received the most notable fruits grown in their countries. He is said to have had a most remarkable memory and could carry in mind the names, tree-habits, and qualities of any fruit he had ever seen and could identify it at sight. In whatever group of pomologists he chanced to be, his identifications and decisions on nomenclature were accepted as correct. Small wonder, therefore, that the Book of Fruits, published by Manning in 1838, at once took the place of authority for descriptions of tree-fruits and for such small-fruits, trees, and shrubs as the author described. It was the first, and is almost the only, American pomology in which the descriptions were all made with fruit in hand. The author intended this book to be the first of a series, but the books to follow never appeared. He was one of the founders of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. Pear-growers are indebted to Manning for the work he did in testing the seedlings sent out by Van Mons, the famous Belgian breeder, most of whose pears came to American orchards through the agency of the Salem Pomological Garden. He also received and introduced valuable pears from the London Horticultural Society. His achievements mark Manning among the most notable American pomologists, of whom no other labored as devotedly for the attainment of better pears.

[29] Bernard S. Fox was a pioneer nurseryman and fruit-grower in California who gave much time to improving the pear through seedlings. During his stay of thirty years in the state of his adoption he was noted for his energy and enterprise in every industry that had to do with fruit-growing. Fox was an Irishman who came to America in 1848 and began work in the garden and nurseries of Hovey and Company of Boston. A few years later he emigrated with the gold-seekers to California where, shortly, he settled at San Jose as a nurseryman and fruit-grower. Eventually he became possessed of a considerable amount of land the increasing value of which made him a very wealthy man, and he took pleasure in being a patron of horticulture as well as a worker in its several fields. Early in his career at San Jose his interest was aroused in the production of new pears from seed. He was a most conscientious selecter and only the best survived in his orchards. He was at all times extremely anxious not to cumber the list of pears with worthless varieties. Out of a great number of seedlings, only three finally received his approval, P. Barry, Fox, and Colonel Wilder. All have high places in the pear lists of California and the United States, and do honor to an enthusiastic and painstaking breeder of pears. For many years before his death in July, 1880, he was the Vice President of the American Pomological Society for California. Bernard S. Fox was one of the first fruit-growers to bring fame to California, and Californians are justly proud of him.

[30] Peter Kieffer, a nurseryman of good reputation in his state, deserves pomological honors because of his keenness of vision in selecting for distribution the pear which bears his name. Few men would have recognized merit in the seedling from which the Kieffer pear came. Peter Kieffer was born in Alsace in 1812, whence he emigrated to America in 1834. In Europe he had worked for twelve years in the garden of the King of France and upon his arrival in America sought employment as a gardener which he found on the estate of James Gowen at Mt. Airy, near Philadelphia. In 1853 he started a small nursery at Roxborough, a short distance from Philadelphia. Much of his stock was imported from Europe, most of which came from Van Houtte, the famous Belgian nurseryman. From Van Houtte, Kieffer obtained seeds of the Chinese Sand pear from which came the Kieffer pear as described in the history of the variety. As a token of his faith in his new variety, Kieffer planted an orchard of this pear, some of the trees of which still live and bear. Peter Kieffer died in 1890, having made an important contribution to horticulture even though the variety sent out by him is far from perfect and has been much over-praised and over-planted.

[31] Patrick Barry, one of the founders of the firm of Ellwanger and Barry, whose Mount Hope Nurseries at Rochester, New York, were long of national and international reputation, was born in Belfast, Ireland, in 1816 and died in Rochester, N. Y., in 1890. Besides contributing to the fame of the nursery company he helped to found, Barry was for many years one of the leading pomological editors and authors of the country. New York, especially western New York, is greatly indebted to George Ellwanger and Patrick Barry for the horticultural services of their firm. It is not an exaggeration to say that they introduced fruit-growing in western New York, a region now famous for its fruits. So, also, the parks and home grounds of the many beautiful cities, towns, and villages in western New York are adorned and enriched by ornamental trees, shrubs and vines from the nurseries of Ellwanger and Barry. Patrick Barry came to America in 1836 and with George Ellwanger founded the Mount Hope Nurseries in 1840. Here for a half century he devoted himself to the introduction and distribution of fruit and out-of-door ornamental plants. In the early life of the nursery company many importations were made from Europe and at a time when there were no railroads, telegraph wires, nor ocean steamboats. It was during this early period that the Mount Hope Nurseries began the importation of pears and soon built up one of the largest collections in the country and one which was maintained long after the famous collections farther east had disappeared. At one time or another over 1000 varieties of pears were tested on the grounds of this nursery. For a half century, fruit-growers have studied with pleasure and profit the exhibits of pears made by Ellwanger and Barry at the State and National exhibitions of note. From 1844 to 1852, Patrick Barry edited The Genesee Farmer, one of the best agricultural papers of its day and succeeded A. J. Downing in the editorship of The Horticulturist which he brought to Rochester in 1855 where it was published until 1887. Barry’s Treatise on the Fruit-Garden appeared in 1851 and at once became one of the most popular books on pomology. In 1872 the "Treatise" was rewritten and published as Barry’s Fruit Garden. Another notable work of which he was author was The Catalogue of Fruits of the American Pomological Society which was compiled by him. Patrick Barry was one of the founders of the Western New York Horticultural Society, for many years the leading horticultural organization of the continent, and of which he was president for more than thirty years. Patrick Barry ranks with Coxe, Kenrick, the Downings, Warder, Eliot, and Thomas as a great leader in pomology of the time in which he lived.

William Crawford Barry, son of Patrick Barry of the preceding sketch, was born in Rochester, New York, in 1847. As a boy he attended parochial schools at Rochester and at Seton Hall, South Orange, New Jersey. As a young man he studied in Berlin, Heidelberg, and the University of Louvain in Belgium. Upon returning to America he took a position in a seed house in New York that he might have practical knowledge of the seed business to bring to the firm of Ellwanger and Barry of which he was soon to become a member. After serving an apprenticeship in the seed business he returned to Rochester to enter the firm which his father and George Ellwanger had founded. From the time of entrance in this company he took a prominent part in its affairs, and for many years before his death, December 12, 1916, he was president of the corporation. Of his horticultural activities, he may be said to have been an organizer and promotor—one of the captains in the industry. For twenty-six years he was president of the Western New York Horticultural Society, having succeeded his father to this office. He was the first president of the American Rose Society, and in 1882 was president of the Eastern Nurserymen’s Association. For three years he was president of the Board of Control of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station. He helped to establish and took a leader’s part in developing the parks of Rochester which have made that city famous among lovers of landscapes. Highland Park was almost a creation of the firm of Ellwanger and Barry. In 1888 the firm gave the city twenty acres of land adjoining the Highland reservoir as the first step in establishing a park system for Rochester. Mr. Barry was chairman of the committee of the park board having in charge Highland Park from the creation of the board until the year before his death when it passed out of existence. Besides these horticultural activities, Mr. Barry was either president or an officer in six banks and trust companies in Rochester. His was a commanding figure in the horticulture of New York. No one attending the meetings of the Western New York Horticultural Society during the twenty-six years he was president can forget Mr. Barry. His knowledge in every division of horticulture, his devotion to grape and pear culture, his genial manner and pleasant greeting to all members, and his force and tact as a presiding officer fitted him so preËminently well for the place that he was unopposed for the presidency during twenty-six terms following the death of his father and until his death.

George Ellwanger, one of the founders and thereafter until his death one of the partners in the Mount Hope Nurseries, Rochester, New York, was born in Germany in 1816 and died in Rochester, New York, in 1906. He came to the United States in 1835, having been educated as a horticulturist in Stuttgart, although possibly the training he received throughout his youth from his father, a grower of grapes and fruits, taught him most, for Ellwanger often said that it was from his father that he acquired his love of horticulture and was by him persuaded to devote his life to the vocation of nurseryman. Ellwanger settled in Rochester in 1839, and the next year joined with Patrick Barry in forming the nursery and seed firm of Ellwanger and Barry, calling their place of business "Mount Hope Nurseries." Ellwanger was one of the founders of the American Pomological Society, and of the Western New York Horticultural Society and throughout his life took an active interest in both organizations. Mr. Ellwanger had large business interests in Rochester and western New York and helped most materially to develop the city and the country about. His chief contributions to horticulture were made through the Mount Hope Nurseries, the influence of which is briefly set forth in the sketch of the life of Patrick Barry.

[32] Henry Waggoman Edwards, at one time Governor of Connecticut, was a pioneer American pear breeder credited with making the first systematic attempt to grow new pears in this country. He was a grandson of the eminent theologian, Jonathan Edwards, was born at New Haven, Conn., in 1779, graduated at Princeton College in 1797, studied law at the Litchfield School and almost immediately entered into public life shortly to become prominent and famous in state and nation. He served Connecticut with honors as its Governor, and in the nation he distinguished himself as Representative in the House from Connecticut, Speaker of the House and as Senator. But it is as a pomologist that his career is of concern to the reader. Always interested in pomology, and no doubt especially interested in pears through the spectacular work of Van Mons, he planted pear seeds in the fall of 1817 with the aim of obtaining new and superior varieties of this fruit. Great success did not attend his attempts at pear breeding, but Governor Edwards made a start in work which Manning, Wilder and a score of others were to carry forward with more striking results. Out of many seedlings, at least five were named and were grown for a longer or shorter time by the pear-growers of a century ago. These are Elizabeth, Calhoun, Dallas, Henrietta and Citron, all described among the minor varieties of this text. While hardly to be considered among the foremost pomologists of the country, Governor Edwards is in the front rank of the lesser men whose combined work has done so much to give weight and impulse to American pomology.