A correspondent writes that he bought one of the Kieffer pears offered by Mr. Satterthwaite for sale at his stand in the Philadelphia market, paying him twenty-five cents for the specimen. That it had a remarkably taking appearance; but that when he took it home he found to his sorrow that it was not worth taking, except as medicine.

This is quite likely, and yet does not prove that the fruit is not of superior quality when properly grown. Mr. Satterthwaite stated before the recent meeting of the Pennsylvania State Horticultural Association, he had more than a hundred bushels from trees two and three years grafted, each giving over a bushel. If Mr. Satterthwaite had thinned these to half a bushel, the eating qualities would have been improved. But he grows for profit, and has to study how to realize the most from his trees.

If he had thinned half, he would have had to sell for fifty cents each, instead of twenty-five cents, to make the same money. It is doubtful if he could have sold all the pears at fifty cents each, no matter how good they might have been. Mr. Satter-thwaite took the right view, but it is folly to take such experiments as the true test of the eating quality of the Kieffer pear.