The Pears of New York. U. P. Hedrick
counteract this, they say, is to give the animals some to eat, or at least to show them the fruit before starting.”
There is in the books of these old farmer-writers a mass of sagacious teachings which can never be outlived—will always underlay the best practice. Followed carefully, except in the matter of pests, the precepts of Cato and Varro would as certainly lead to success as the mandates of the modern experiment stations with all the up-to-date appliances for carrying out their commands. Sagacity fails, however, in one respect in these Roman husbandmen—all are fettered by superstitions. In these old books on the arts of husbandry, woven in with the practical precepts, which stand well the test of science, superstitions abound beyond present belief. Thus, whenever the discourse turns to pears, from Diophanes, who lived in Asia Minor a century before Christ, down through the ages in Greece, Italy, France, Belgium to the eighteenth century in England, runs the superstition, with various modifications, that to grow the best pears you must bore a hole through the trunk at the ground and drive in a plug of oak or beech over which the earth must be drawn. If the wound does not heal, it must be washed for a fortnight with the lees of wine. As the superstition waned, the apologetic injunction usually follows, that, in any event the wine-lees will improve the flavor of the fruit. Another superstition, current for centuries, accepted by Cato and Varro, and handed on with abiding faith almost to modern times was, as stated by Barnaby Googe, a farmer and writer subject of Queen Elizabeth, “if you graffe your peare upon a Mulbery, you shall have red Peares.” Stories of promiscuous grafting abound in the old books. Another is that if an apple be grafted on the pear, the fruit is a “pearmain.”
After Pliny follows a dreary and impenetrable period of 1500 years, in which time but few new facts regarding the evolution of the pear come to light in what is now Italy. The pear is mentioned, it is true, by many Roman writers, but all copy Theophrastus, Cato, and Pliny. Dioscorides, a learned Greek physician and botanist, who may be said to have been the author of the first book of “applied science” in botany, was the great botanical and pomological authority for the first 1600 years of the present era, many editions of his book appeared and in several languages, and it is he who is most often quoted by writers on fruits even until the seventeenth century, but he adds nothing new on the pear, and does not even extend the list of known varieties. During these 1600 years a great number of voluminous commentaries on Dioscorides appeared, in several of which names of new pears are mentioned, but, with the exception of one writer, the descriptions are so terse that the new sorts cannot be connected with older or later periods. The exception is Matthiolus (1501–1577), but since the English herbalists, in their turn, largely copy Matthiolus, with valuable amplifications, it is better to give space further on to them.
Perhaps one more name should be mentioned among the Roman writers. Messer Pietro de Crescenzi, an Italian born at Bologna in 1230, wrote a book on agriculture in which the chapters on fruits are especially well written. For reasons to be mentioned, this book had a remarkable influence on the horticulture of Europe for the next three or four centuries. With the discovery of printing, nearly two centuries after the book was written, Crescenzi was published in numerous editions and in several languages to the great enlightenment of pomologists on the cultivation of fruits, but with small additions to the knowledge of the fruits themselves. Whether because the book was really the most serviceable of its kind in the world for four centuries, or whether by virtue of the happy circumstance of being many times printed, it had absolute supremacy over other agricultural texts, is now too late to judge. There is good reason to suspect that Crescenzi’s is the precedence of circumstance, for he stole page after page from Palladius, of the fourth century, who, to be sure, in his turn, copied Columella and the Greeks. Most of these borrowings, however, meet the requirement of being “bettered by the borrower” that separates adoption from plagiarism.
One other landmark, though a somewhat inconspicuous one, in the history of the pear in Italy, is deserving brief mention. Toward the middle of the sixteenth century Agostino Gallo, an Italian, wrote The Twenty Days of Agriculture and the Charms of Country Life. With the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, agriculture was reduced to the production of the necessities of life and pomology all but perished. It required a thousand years to recover from the domination of the barbarian conqueror of Rome. Hence, it is not surprising that Gallo names but twelve varieties of pears instead of the forty-one of Pliny. Gallo says that he does not name all of the summer pears, but leaves the inference that his list is complete for autumn and winter sorts. There probably was a greater number under cultivation at this time in Italy, but Gallo’s list shows that the number was small. Gallo is regarded as the restorer of agriculture in Italy after the dark ages, and as one of the most enlightened men of his time, so that we may accept him as an accurate historian. Besides furnishing a list of the pears of his day in Italy, Gallo names two that are now under cultivation—Bergamot and Bon Chrétien.
THE PEAR IN FRANCE
Who introduced the pear in France matters little. The Greeks who founded Marseille 600 B.C. may have done so. The Romans, masters of ancient Gaul for centuries, undoubtedly planted pears at widely separated places and in earliest times of Roman occupation. Or, and quite possibly, the original natives of the land began the domestication of the pear for, as we have seen, two cultivated species grow wild in what is now France. Date and manner of introduction matter less than a recognizable landmark in the history of the pear as an orchard plant in France. There is such a landmark and a conspicuous one.
Charlemagne, the many-sided genius who ruled the Franks in the ninth century, exercised his powerful influence in behalf of agriculture during the time of his reign, and to him is due credit for establishing the first notable landmark in the history of the pear in France. We are well informed of Charlemagne’s various activities while in power, for official annals were kept at the Frankish Court. Charlemagne’s secretary has left a biography of his master, and many of the King’s Capitularies, or lists of laws, are extant. In these records, agriculture is a matter of constant comment and the pear is often up for discussion. One quotation serves to show that this fruit was cultivated in considerable variety in Charlemagne’s orchards.
In the Capitulaire de Villis, Chapter LXX, Charlemagne is reported to have commanded his orchardists to plant pears of distinct kinds for distinct purposes. That the command was of sufficient importance to be recorded in a capitulaire indicates that Charlemagne esteemed this fruit. The order runs: “Plant pear trees whose products, because of pleasant flavor, could be eaten raw, those which will furnish fruits for cooking, and, finally, those which mature late to serve for use in winter.” There is little information in this brief command, but it tells us that a considerable number of varieties of pears were grown in France in the ninth century, and that they were of sufficient importance to hold the attention of a great and busy monarch.
Either the culture of the pear abruptly ceased with the death of Charlemagne or records ceased to be kept that would throw light on the agriculture of the next five centuries, for from the tenth to the fifteenth century is an uncharted waste in the history of the pear in France. Undoubtedly pears were cultivated during this time by the monks who had the time, the taste, and the land for carrying on agriculture. When the pear comes to light again in the happier period for pomology of the sixteenth century, the many names of monasteries in the list of varieties suggest that the monks not only busied themselves with the culture of the fruit but greatly increased the number of kinds of pears.
Three great minds now appeared to make France the leading country in the production of agricultural literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and all paid attention to pomology. The names of Charles Estienne, Olivier de Serres, and Le Lectier in agriculture mark the departure from traditions handed down from the old Greeks and Romans to the beginning of a new agriculture founded on first-hand study and observation. The printing-press, it is true, was now an invaluable ally, but these three men were of an original bent of mind and would have been distinguished in any period before printing.
Charles Estienne, the first and the least of these