My soil, or rather subsoil, is a very compact yellow clay and of course the surface soil has much of the clay in it. Some years before the war I had the Glout Morceau pear on quince to come into bearing. The first few years the fruit showed considerable astringency. I think I found a single well-developed specimen in the years I let the trees stand, to be free enough of astringency to make it barely palatable, and I am not at all opposed to a little astringency.

I had to move or destroy those trees as they proved to be in the way. But in the meantime I had some standards coming on in what I thought rather better ground, but the fruit on them proved to be, if possible, more astringent than the former. They soon, however, died of blight, and I have none of it since and have left that variety out of nursery and orchard. In both plats of ground and at the same time of the Glout Morceau's existence and bearing I had the Louise Bonne under the same circumstances of treatment, etc. For a few years, say three or four at most, the Louise Bonne was fairly free of astringency, but it then became rough and astringent so as to be almost worthless. On the standards they were rather slow bearing and the roots got down I presume in the clay; at any rate there has been no real fine flavor about them, though the fruit was larger and prettier than on the dwarfs. I find the Duchess, too, more coarse (and astringent at times) than I see and taste them from other places.

This matter of astringency in pears I read in Mr. A. J. Downing's book, while he was yet alive, and as it proved so suited to my experience I set it down as one of the unerring facts, and have tried so to teach others. Lovettsviile, Va.

[This is an additional evidence in favor of Mr. Downing's view, that clay or heavy soil favors astringency. It is yet worth while discovering in what way clay soil acts on inducing astringency. If the Glout Morceau, Louise Bonne or other pears known to have this defect, produce fruit in heavy soil free from this annoyance, the fact would be worth recording, as it is by exceptions that we often learn to account for the rule. - Ed. G. M].