Country Life
REVIVING ORCHARDS.
Any observant traveller in the West of England will notice at intervals how many relies there are of old orchards, now gone utterly to ruin ; and in very many, especially in Herefordshire, this place is marked by just one old pear tree. The pity of allowing these pears, these sorts of pear, to vanish has appealed to one of our more famous men of science, who has devoted much of his skill to the cider industry, and for some years he has been travelling the country, especially the district where Gloucester and Hereford join, in order to rescue and revive the moribund varieties. He has discovered, after many years of research, no fewer than one hundred and fifty different sorts and there still remain undiscovered treasures. He has photographed the trees, some in colour ; he has collected the names, which are quaint and racy of the soil, and he has, with his assessors, budded or grafted the pears on young stocks. It is thought that about forty of the one hundred and fifty odd are worth preserving for the manufacture of that subtle and sometimes potent drink known as Perry, for all these pears, with one or two exceptions, are perry pears.
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