The remarks of A. Thorn, in our last number, set us to thinking about our fruit books, and to studying up a little as to the sources from which their authors derived information. In apples, peaches, plums, cherries, and the small fruits, we imagine they have most of the matter, as it were, in their own hands; that is, most of the varieties are grown in this country, and a large number of them originated here. The compiler, therefore, if well posted as to men and their advantages for knowledge and comparison, as well as to the fruits, can readily decide as to the probable, if not actual, distinctness of the variety as well as its value. In pears, however, the matter is entirely different. Most of our varieties - and among them many superior ones - come to us from abroad. They are sent here to a dozen or more amateurs and nurserymen by different amateurs and nurserymen abroad; and the experience here is quite contradictory, some having a pyriform-shaped pear, others a roundish obovate one, but both received under the same name. Even our foreign friends conflict in their delineations of varieties; and thus, without designing to mislead, we are often, while taking one man's views and descriptions, led wide of the truth.

When we understand that few if any foreign authors have any but office acquaintance with the fruits; that personally they never graft or bud a tree, or cut a graft to be sent away, but make their descriptions, propagate and send out their varieties as received by them from the foreman of their establishment, we can readily see how difficult and how uncertain of being correct is any pomolog-ical work on pears. And this arises from the fact, that abroad there is no head; it is every author for himself; and here we have no garden where a tree of each variety is grown and tribed. Practically, it may be said, the whole list of varieties is of little use; there are but a few valuable sorts; but we must remember that without this gathering and experimenting with numerous sorts, by men whose time has been given to the subject without thought of pecuniary gain, we should never have had our list of choice varieties. The Beurre d'Anjou - long in the records of Loudon as Ne Plus Meuris, without a Wilder - would never have been known and everywhere esteemed as now by our people.

Let us therefore take our fruit books and our fruit men for the good they give us, and commend them; therefore, at the same time, let us one and all see what may be done toward the establishment of one grand garden in this country, wherein every sort should be grown a tree by itself, carefully classed, recorded, and examined from month to month; and one or more propagated from it each year, so that in case of injury its place could be supplied, and hence the variety never lost. Such a garden would soon reduce our fruit books of their inconsistencies; and also, by reason of a condemned list of sorts - which could be made from records gathered of the success of varieties in various sections, and from the comparisons in the garden - shortly bring them to a limit of pages afforded at a price within the reach of all, and at a profit to the publisher.