Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/221

 PEAR 211 recognized, the Virginia, which is the larger, and the Carolina or African. The vines when properly harvested, before there has been too much frost, are considered of equal value as food for animals with any other forage crop. Large quantities of peanuts are eaten, usually roasted ; but their chief use is for making oil, the seeds containing from 42 to 50 per cent, of a nearly colorless, bland, fixed oil, resem- bling olive oil and used for similar purposes ; the best is obtained by cold expression, but a larger quantity of inferior oil is procured by heating the seeds before pressing ; it is a non- drying oil, changing but slowly by exposure to the atmosphere, and remaining fluid in a cold several degrees below 32 F. It contains, be- sides oleic and palmitic acids, two other oily acids, which have been called the arachic and hypogseic, though it is doubtful if they are really distinct. The principal consumption of the oil is in soap making. In the year 1867 there were imported into Marseilles alone, from Africa, more than 6,000,000 bushels, valued at over 25,000,000 francs. The seeds are also used in the manufacture of chocolate. The peanut may be cultivated in northern gardens by those who wish to witness its curious habit of pushing the pods under ground to ripen, though they will not come to perfection. PEAR (It. and Span, pera ; Fr. poire; Lat. pyrus), a well known fruit and fruit tree (py- rus communis) of temperate climates, belong- ing to the tribe pomece of the rosacece or rose family, and closely related to the apple (P. ma- ins). While the fruit of the pear is quite dis- tinct in its sensible qualities from that of the apple, it is difficult to find many botanical char- acters to distinguish the two as different spe- cies. The branches of the pear are inclined to Flower Cluster. be thorny; the young shoots and leaves are usually smooth ; the flowers pure white, with purple anthers, and the fruit generally taper- ing toward the stem, the base of which is not as in the apple sunk in a cavity ; to this last distinction there are occasional exceptions, some varieties being shaped quite like an apple. The habit of the tree is often pyramidal, with ascending branches ; its wood is very hard and close, and when dyed black is used by cabinet makers as a substitute for ebony; it is also used by engravers for coarse work ; the fruit is usually sugary and melting, with concretions near the core of indurated cells which are exceedingly hard and stony. The pear is a na- tive of the temperate portions of ^Europe and the Caucasus, and was cultivated in very early times ; in Pliny's day there were numerous va- rieties, which could not have been very choice, as he observes : "All pears whatsoever are but a heavy meat unless well boiled or baked;" indeed, there is reason to believe that the fruit has attained its present excellence within a comparatively recent period. The varieties present such wide differences that many, in- including M. Decaisne, at one time thought they must have originated from more than one species ; but the experiments of Decaisne, em- inent as a pomologist as well as a botanist, convinced him that they all probably have the same origin. Philip Miller, who died in 1771, enumerated above 250 varieties, 70 or 80 of which he regarded as select ; at the present time, according to Decaisne, there are more than 3,000 varieties given in the various com- mercial and pomological catalogues; Down- ing's "Fruits and Fruit Trees of America" (1869) gives descriptions of about 970 varieties as having been cultivated in this country, and foreign and native sorts brought to notice since then will make the number considerably over 1,000 ; the list of the American pomological society, including only what may be regarded as standard sorts, numbers 95. Some of the many varieties have been produced by direct crossing of two established sorts ; others were obtained by ameliorating inferior kinds by re- production from seed for successive genera- tions under conditions tending to subdue and refine each generation; this was the plan of Van Mons of Belgium, who raised during a life devoted to the pear some 80,000 seedlings in his attempts at improving the fruit. While some excellent varieties have resulted from the direct efforts to improve the pear by various cultivators, it cannot be denied that the num- ber of these is small when compared with those obtained by sowing seed without any system, or discovered as chance seedlings in out-of-the- way places ; an American variety, the Seckel, to which no superior in quality has yet been found, is a wild seedling, the parentage of which is quite unknown, and the generally popular Duchesse d'Angouleme is an example of a chance European variety found in a hedge row. The pear is a rather long-lived tree, sev- eral specimens in England having been known to be about 400 years old ; the tree planted by Peter Stuyvesant, which stood at the corner of 13th street and 3d avenue, New York, at the time of its destruction in 1867 was more than 200 years old ; and the remarkable trees near