County. The parent tree is dead, and it cannot now be ascertained where it originated, and no one knows it except from this source. It is a rapid grower, and an early and abundant bearer. We consider it one of our very best pears, and hope it will please you." On opening the box, we found six unusually large pears, and we more than ever had the impression that it must have been overrated, as a pear so very large and handsome could not, by any possibility, have been for some years cultivated without its qualities—if so very superior-being widely and extensively known. As they appeared rather hard, and not in a state for eating, we placed them away to ripen.

A fortnight after this, we ate one of the pears, and, to our great surprise, we found it to possess qualities of the very highest excellence-qualities which we had scarcely found in any pear we had ever tasted. We had just eaten of all the fine kinds of the season, such as the Belle Lucrative, Flemish Beauty, Louise Bonne de Jersey, Marie Louise, &c., and when we state that neither of them came up to the Swan's Orange, we only state what, in our humble opinion, we believe to be true. At this time, we had not examined the specimens in the bottom of the box, which were wrapped up in paper, and our surprise was still increased when we found one of the pears to weigh upwards of thirteen ounces. Four weeks elapsed before we ate the last specimen, and, up to that period, they remained perfectly sound, without the least appearance of rot at the core. Indeed, we do not hesitate to affirm that, if the epithet of the "best pear in the world" belongs to any variety, it is to the Swan's Orange.

Desirous to give a full account of so remarkable a pear, whose history appeared to be involved in some obscurity, we applied to our friend Mr. Bissell to supply it, and, at the same time, wrote to other correspondents, that we might have all the particulars; and we are happy to state that these have been kindly furnished by E. W. Leavenworth, Esq., of Syracuse, to whom we are indebted for the following account, under the date of Dec. 26th last, so interesting that we make no apology for its length :

"The entire history of the 'Onondaga Seedling' is embraced in the following facts, so far as the same has yet

been traced. Some six or eight years since, and, perhaps, ten, Deacon Joseph Swan, of Onondaga Hollow-four miles south of this-had a son living in Rochester. In the fall of the year, he took from home, and exhibited in Rochester, some specimens of this pear. It received universal admiration. Ellwanger & Barry procured scions from Mr. Swan-grafted into an old tree or trees-and have the fruit now growing. They also propagated the tree in their nursery, and called it 'Swan's Orange,' and 'The Onondaga Seedling.' They have spread the knowledge of the tree extensively. I have, this season, undertaken to trace its history. I traced the only trees I have yet found, being Mr. Swan's single tree, and five owned by one Killman, to the garden of Henry Case, at Liverpool, five miles north of here, on the Onondaga Lake. Case left this country many years since; but I found him by letter at Granville, in Ohio. I have a letter from him, received a few weeks since, in which he says that he cut the graft from which his original tree grew, on the ground of the father of the late Fisher Curtiss, Esq., of this town, in Farmington, Conn., in the winter of 1806; that, in the spring of 1806, he put the graft into a small tree, about three miles west of Onondaga Hill; and, in 1808, moved the tree to Liverpool, where it died in 1823. But, in the mean time, it had become a large tree, and borne fruit, and many grafts had been taken from it; he particularly remembers Mr. Killman's. He does not state the cause of the death of his tree in 1823. Mr. Swan informed me that his tree came from Case's. Swan's tree is old and not thrifty-grows in the grass-I presume was never manured or dug about-and the place is a steep side hill, and every way unfavorable. There are no young shoots on the tree, or were none last year. Mr. Killman has one small tree, and four in bearing about fifteen years old. They are also in grass, but are thrifty, hardy, excellent growers and bearers— bear every year, and abundantly. These are the only trees known here.

"I have not yet attempted to trace the history of the tree at Farmington, Conn., but if no other person does, I will."

Since the receipt of the above, we have had several letters from Mr. Leavenworth, but he has been unable to learn any thing respecting its history in Connecticut, and, though

we have delayed our description to complete this, we have also been unable to glean any further account of its origin.

Nothing is more important in pomology than uniformity of nomenclature. A fruit once named, no alteration should be made, even upon what might sometimes seem reasonable grounds. If every individual can re-name a fruit as soon as he introduces it into his garden, pomologists might give up at once all attempts to reduce the chaotic confusion, which already exists, into something like order. The rules which govern pomological science are precisely the same as those which have always governed botanical science, and are probably familiar to most cultivators. A fruit which has been named by a special vote of a Horticultural Society, and described and figured under that name, cannot be changed without violating all these rules; and no author or pomologist who had the promotion of the science at heart, and not the exhibition of his own dogmatic opinion, would attempt such an alteration. Such is the case in regard to Swan's Orange. The Horticultural Society of Rochester, some years since, called it after Mr. Swan, because he first exhibited specimens of the fruit, and he was, in fact, the individual who brought it to notice. From 1806 to 1823, a period of seventeen years, while it grew in the garden of Mr. Case, we cannot learn that it had a name, or that any attempt was made to disseminate it, or, from 1823 to 1840, a period of seventeen years more, do we hear any thing of it: but, no sooner did the younger Mr. Swan perceive its excellence, than he exhibited the fruit, introduced it to notice, and gave away the scions to nurserymen that the trees might be disseminated. Will any individual say that "Mr. Case's name, if that of any person, should be attached to it" ? Certainly not. And again, allowing, for a moment, that Mr. Swan's name should not be coupled with it, why should it be called Onondaga, a name, we admit, which we should like, if it were for the first time applied. Did it originate in Onondaga county? Certainly not. It is a New England pear, and grew in that "sandy soil and rude climate near Hartford" where " many sorts of pears that once flourished well are now feeble, and the fruit often blighted." The name of Onondaga cannot apply, and, without alluding to Mr. Barry's description and figure of this variety, the priority of

introduction to notice is sufficient to establish the name of Swan's Orange. How stands the case with the Bartlett pear, which, though an old and well known English variety, is now called by that name, even in some pomological works, be

Fig. 19. Swan's Orange.

cause it was first imported into Mr. Bartlett's garden. Here we have a foreign pear described and figured in European works, and yet it is called after the person who first brought it to notice in this country. Go further back, and see how foreign pomologists respect priority of name. The Bartlett, so called, was raised in Berkshire, in England, by a Mr. Wheeler, and was first introduced to notice by Mr. Wil

liams, a nurseryman at Chiswick, near London, whose grounds are now in the possession of Mr. Glendening, and where we saw the old tree in 1844. Yet no cultivator attempted to call it after the individual who raised it. Mr. Williams brought it into notice, and, from this circumstance, it received the name of Williams's Bon Chrétien.

It only remains for us to add our description to these rather long preliminary remarks, which have been extended from the exceeding high merit of the variety, a variety which, we repeat, must be called the "king of pears." It is no small credit to our rapid strides in pomology, thus early to be enabled to possess a native variety which fully equals, if not surpasses, any thing which the accumulated labors of European pomologists for centuries have produced.

Swan's Orange (fig. 19), in general appearance, somewhat resembles a large specimen of Williams's Bon Chrétien, having the same uneven surface, but, towards the crown, it is much broader, and the stem end is nearly always swollen and raised on one side, so as to throw the stem into an oblique direction.

The tree, as our correspondent, Mr. Leavenworth, remarks, is a thrifty, hardy, and excellent grower, and bears fine crops, even under the ordinary treatment of orchard culture, in grass land. Messrs. Ellwanger & Barry inform us it is a most rapid grower. Whether it will succeed upon the quince remains to be ascertained, but we shall try it next autumn. The wood is strong and upright, rather short-jointed, with prominent buds, and of a clear olive shade.

Size, large, about four and a half inches long, and three and a half in diameter: Form, oblong obovate, little uneven, and irregular or Bon Chrétien shaped, largest in the middle, narrowing towards the crown, and tapering to the stem, near which, on one side, it is suddenly contracted: Skin, very fair, smooth, greenish yellow, but becoming a bright yellow when mature, leaving a few traces of green, russeted around the eye, faintly tinged with blush on the sunny side, and very regularly covered with small, round, russet specks: Stem, rather short, about half an inch in length, moderately stout, crooked, greyish brown, with white specks, slightly fleshy at the base, curved and obliquely inserted in a very shallow