"The Winter peare is of many sorts, but this is onely so called, to bee distinguished from all other Winter peares, which have severall names given them, and is a very good peare. "The Warden or Luke Wards peare of two sorts, both white and red, both great and small. "The Spanish Warden is greater than either of both the former, and better also. "The peare of Jerusalem, or the stript peare, whose barke while it is young, is as plainly seene to be stript with greene, red, and yellow, as the fruit it selfe is also, and is of a very good taste: being baked also, it is as red as the best Warden, whereof Master William Ward of Essex hath assured mee, who is the chiefe keeper of the Kings Granary at Whitehall. "Hereof likewise there is a wilde kinde no bigger than ones thumbe, and striped in the like manner, but much more. "The Choke peares, and other wilde peares, both great and small, as they are not to furnish our Orchard, but the Woods, Forrests, Fields, and Hedges, so wee leave them to their naturall places, and to them that keep them, and make good use of them." Three hundred years have played havoc with the pears Parkinson knew. None are known in America, and unless the Pound of Parkinson is the Pound of today, not a half dozen are found in current lists in England. Parkinson's Catherine, Winter Bon Chretien, Windsor, Bergamot, possibly the Pound, and his Gergonell, the Jargonelle of today, are about all the names that would be recognized by modern pear-growers. The pear shows far fewer familiar names at the end of three centuries than Parkinson lists of apples, plums, cherries, or even the peach in Europe. Dropping old varieties can only be interpreted as improvement in the pear. The pear, it seems certain, has been more profoundly changed for the better through the touch of man's hand than the other fruits named since Parkinson wrote. For this, pomology has the Belgians to thank.