The Pears of New York. U. P. Hedrick
the Belgians, the buttery pears predominate.
Of the means by which Hardenpont obtained his superior pears, there is no precise knowledge. Whether his new sorts were lucky chances out of a large number of promiscuous seedlings, or whether he was a pioneer in hybridizing can never be known. Du Mortier, a distinguished Belgian botanist, gives the credit of hybridization to the Abbé, basing his opinion on the fact that the characters of most of Hardenpont’s varieties are plainly a commingling of two well-known parents which could hardly be the case if they were happy chances were fate ever so kindly disposed.
Hardenpont soon had many imitators in Belgium. Indeed, the Belgians seem to have been quite carried off their feet by pear-breeding, and during the first half of the nineteenth century a fad like the “tulip craze” of Holland and the “mulberry craze” of America reigned in the country. Among the breeders are found the names of priests, physicians, scientists, apothecaries, attorneys, tradesmen, and gentlemen of leisure. The introduction of new varieties made notable in horticulture the towns of Mons, Tournaii, Enghien, Louvain, Malines, and Brussels. The awarding of medals for new pears produced the horticultural sensations of the times. Hundreds if not thousands of new varieties were introduced, of which many, it is true, have proved worthless, others of but secondary merit, while still others, as we shall find, are even now among the best pears under cultivation. But the great fact, be it remembered, is that these amateur pear-breeders wrought in a few years a complete transformation in a fruit that had been domesticated and had been fairly stable for over 2000 years.
A few names besides Hardenpont stand out prominently and must be mentioned. Of these, Van Mons is best known. Jean Baptiste Van Mons, 1765–1842, was a pharmacist, physicist, and physician, one of the savants of his time, who, late in the eighteenth century, under the potent spell cast by Hardenpont’s work, began to breed pears. Space forbids an account of Van Mons’ experiments. Suffice to say that he introduced more than two scores of pears having lasting merit, and that in the height of his career he had in his “Nursery of Fidelity” at Louvain, eighty thousand seedlings. Van Mons outlives in fame the Belgian pear-breeders of his time because he propounded a theory for the origination of new varieties of plants, and this in its turn is famed as the first complete system of plant improvement. Van Mons contributed but little of direct value to plant-breeding, but indirectly he gave a great impetus to breeding pears and to the culture of the pear, more especially in America, and we must therefore glance at his theory and trace more in detail its influence on American pear-growing.
Van Mons’ theory, in brief, as expounded in various papers, is: A species does not vary in the place in which it is born; it reproduces only plants which resemble itself. The causes of variation are changes in soil, climate, or temperature. Whenever a species produces one or many varieties, these varieties continue to vary always. The source of all variation, which is transmissible by sowing, resides in the seeds. The older a variety, the less the seedlings vary, and the more they tend to return toward the primitive form, without being able ever to reach that state; the younger or newer the variety, the more the seedlings vary.
In putting his theory in practice Van Mons took the first seeds from wild plants or those little improved, from which he grew seedlings, and from these the seeds were taken from the first fruits to ripen for new sowings. This practice he repeated generation after generation. Thus, it is seen that Van Mons was an early apostle of selection. He is said to have distributed over 400 varieties, about 40 of which are still under cultivation. It is to be feared, however, that Van Mons’ theory was preconceived without experiment or even observation for a foundation. He devoted a life of most admirable zeal to verifying and developing this vision of his early years with some material reward it is true, but with a better foundation his prodigious labors would have yielded greater direct results in improving the pear. Still, the indirect results, his influence on the pomologists of two continents, even though they did not subscribe to his theories, was more valuable than the work of one mind and one pair of hands could possibly have been.
There must always be pioneers, men who stray from beaten paths, but pioneers seldom exert wide and deep influence at once—leave the worn path, so to speak, and at once construct a macadamized road—yet this was what Van Mons did. Pomologists agree that until his time no man had exerted so profound an influence on pomology. His love of discovery and love of labor permeated fruit-growing in Europe and America. Fortunately, it was the age of the amateur fruit-grower. Pleasure and progress, driven by curiosity, counted for more than commercial success, so that Van Mons’ new varieties at once gave him wide fame. He was made known to American pear-growers by Robert Manning who distributed his new varieties in this country and described them in the horticultural literature of the day and in his Book of Fruits published in 1838. Later, Andrew Jackson Downing, the brilliant genius of American horticulture, published Van Mons’ theories and described many of his new pears in his Fruits and Fruit Trees, which came from the press in 1845. Thus, Van Mons became the recognized authority in America on all matters relating to the pear. Indeed, it is hardly too much to say that we owe him obligations as the founder of pear-culture in this country.
But the work of the Belgians does not end with Van Mons. There were other breeders of pears, who, though not to be classed with Van Mons as a Titan, lacking the quality of mind to set forth a new philosophy, helped to enliven the impulse given by their leader to the improvement of the pear by originating new varieties. Chief of these are Major Espéren, of Malines, who introduced twenty of the pears mentioned in the Pears of New York; Bivort, who has twenty-three to his credit; Gregoire, forty-two; Simon Bouvier, eleven; De Jonghe, six; and De Nelis, five. While, if the lists of varieties in the last two chapters of this text be scanned for Belgians who introduced but one, two, or three new pears, the list runs up into the hundreds. Labor finds its summit in the work of these Belgian pear-breeders, who obtained petty rewards by sifting millions of seedlings through the coarse meshes of the sieve of selection. We can pardon these enthusiastic breeders with grace for over-zealousness in naming varieties obtained with such prodigious efforts.
THE PEAR IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE
The pear can be improved only where the pear-tree flourishes, and then only when assisted by the foresight and desire of men. This happy combination seems not to exist in Europe outside of Italy, France, Belgium, and England. The pear flourishes along the Danube, in parts of Austria and southern Germany, and along the upper Rhine, but the people of these regions seem to have been followers rather than leaders in developing this fruit, having produced almost no meritorious varieties. America is indebted to the vast region of central and western Europe for but one major variety, the Forelle, and this sort is of little importance.
Pomology, the world over, however, is indebted to Germany for much valuable pomological literature. Cordus, Mayer, Christ, Diel, Dittrich, Truchsess, Hinkert, Dochnahl, Oberdieck, Engelbrecht, Lauche, and Gaucher, all Germans, and Kraft, an Austrian, have been industrious compilers, and have given pomology some of its best texts on systematic pomology.
Cordus, earliest German pomological writer, wrote an illuminating chapter in the history of the pear, which must be reproduced. Valerius Cordus, 1515–1544, a botanical genius, made botanical expeditions to nearly every part of Germany, in the course of which he made special study of the apple and the pear. He described fifty pears and thirty-one apples. These descriptions are noteworthy as the earliest for these fruits in Germany. Cordus is called by one great botanist, “the inventor of the art of describing plants;” by another, he is said to have been “first to teach men to cease from dependence on the poor descriptions of the ancients and to describe plants anew from nature;” a third botanical authority says of him, “the first of all men to excel in plant description;” while a fourth writes of the four books of his Historia Plantarum “truly extraordinary because of the accuracy with which the plants are described.” Thus, botanists accord him special distinction, but pomologists seem not to know this resplendent systemist of the sixteenth century, who, as we shall see, is especially deserving of pomological recognition.
Cordus is entitled to honor in the history of pomology as first to print descriptions of