Our wild pear does not differ much from some of the cultivated varieties. Its fruit is sour, spotted, and narrowing towards the stalk, or nearly spherical on the same tree.[1144] With many other cultivated species, it is hard to distinguish the individuals of wild origin from those which the chance transport of seeds has produced at a distance from dwellings. In the present case it is not difficult. Pear trees are often found in woods, and they attain to a considerable height, with all the conditions of fertility of an indigenous plant.[1145] Let us examine, however, whether in the wide area they occupy a less ancient existence may be suspected in some countries than in others. No Sanskrit name for the pear is known, whence it may be concluded that its cultivation is of no long standing in the north-west of India, and that the indication, which is moreover very vague, of wild trees in Kashmir is of no importance. Neither are there any Hebrew or Aramaic names,[1146] but this is explained by the fact that the pear does not flourish in the hot countries in which these tongues were spoken. Homer, Theophrastus, and Dioscorides mention the pear tree under the names _ochnai_, _apios_, or _achras_. The Latins called it _pyrus_ or _pirus_,[1147] and cultivated a great number of varieties, at least in Pliny’s time. The mural paintings at Pompeii frequently represent the tree with its fruit.[1148] The lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Italy gathered wild apples in great quantities, and among their stores pears are sometimes, but rarely, found. Heer has given an illustration of one which cannot be mistaken, found at Wangen or Robenhausen. It is a fruit narrowing towards the stalk, 28 mm. (about an inch and a half) long by 19 mm. (an inch) wide, cut longitudinally so as to show the small quantity of pulp as compared to the cartilaginous central part.[1149] None have been found in the lake-dwellings of Bourget in Savoy. In those of Lombardy, Professor Raggazzoni[1150] found a pear cut lengthways, 25 mm. by 16. This was at Bardello, Lago di Varese. The wild pears figured in Duhamel, _Traité des Arbres_, edit. 2, are 30 to 33 by 30 to 32 mm.; and those of Laristan, figured in the _Jardin Fruitier du Muséum_ under the name _P. balansæ_, which seem to me to be of the same species, and undoubtedly wild, are 26 to 27 mm. by 24 to 25. In modern wild pears the fleshy part is a little thicker, but the ancient lake-dwellers dried their fruits after cutting them lengthways, which must have caused them to shrink a little. No knowledge of metals or of hemp is shown in the settlements where these were found; but, considering their distance from the more civilized centres of antiquity, especially in the case of Switzerland, it is possible that these remains are not more ancient than the Trojan war, or than the foundation of Rome.