When the average literary man - the literary magazine man - gets off his horse, he is very apt to carry his poet's license along with him. We rarely find one who can give any historical fact correctly. Joaquin Miller, the " Poet of the Sierras," has been writing letters from Florida, and fills up his columns with the following account of the Leconte Pear : -

"This new, sandy land cannot be very rich, it seems to me. Vet the people tell me it is amazingly productive. They showed me a pear-tree, yesterday, as we drove down the old Ponce de Leon trail, that, last \ ear, brought the owner $148. This is a Leconte pe.ir-tree, and is only eight years old. The fruit ripens in July, and is bought by New York dealers as it grows on the tree at the fabulous price of four dollars per bushel. This tree is a production of this latitude, and is a revelat'on. The parent tree is still standing. The fruit was discovered and developed by a French gardener, whose name it bears. Many new comers from the North are now clearing off and planting land with this remarkable Leconte Pear. In a year or two the shores of this Fountain of Youth will be blossoming with the discovery of the French gardener".

Our readers need not be told that the Leconte Pear is not a native of Florida, and that the original tree is not still standing in Florida, nor was it "discovered and developed," whatever that may mean, by any French gardener, and the man "whose name it bears" was not a Frenchman, though his ancestors were. In fact the only "revelation" Miller has had in the matter is a mere guess at the whole thing because " le conte" happens to be French. Possibly a tree eight years old from the graft might produce thirty-seven bushels of Pears, but if the price is " fabulous," the measure may be so also.