We have now discovered in what countries the progenitors of cultivated pears grow spontaneously, and are therefore ready to search for the first landmarks in the domestication of the three cultivated species. What has ancient literature to say on the subject? We turn first to the Bible and find that the pear is not mentioned in sacred literature, and that, according to commentators on the Sanscrit and Hebrew languages, there is no name in the tongues of Biblical lands for the pear. Nor should we expect ancient notices of the pear in north-west India or Persia, for the pear does not flourish in hot countries. The survey next turns to ancient Greece where landmarks are at once sighted which must be put down as the earliest records of the pear, and as such deserve full consideration. THE PEAR IN ANCIENT GREECE In ancient Greece we find the first landmarks and begin the history of the pear as a cultivated plant. It is wrong, however, to assume that the beginning of the cultivation of the pear, or of any plant, was contemporaneous with the writing of even the oldest books. Mention of a cultivated plant in a book is proof that its domestication antedates the writing of the book. It is not easy to imagine tribes of semi-civilized men in southern Europe and Asia who did not make use of the apples, pears, quinces, plums, cherries, almonds, olives, figs, pomegranates, and grapes which grew wild in this land of gardens and orchards, and who did not minister to their needs as husbandmen long before men wrote books. Names for orchard operations, as planting, grafting, and pruning, in the simplest dialects of primitive peoples, establish the fact that husbandry long antedates writing, as would be expected from the greater need of the one than of the other. Plutarch, a Greek writer, A.D. 50-120, enlightens us as to the early use of the pear by the Greeks, and also as to the Grecian name for the fruit and tree. He says in his Greek Questions (51): "Why do the boys of the Argives playing at a certain festival call themselves Ballachrades? (_Ballo_, I throw; _achras_, a wild pear.) "It is because they say that those who were first brought down by Inachus (founder of Argos) from the rural districts into the plains were nourished on wild pears (_achrades_). But wild pears (they say) were first seen by the Greeks in Peloponnesus, when that country was still called Apia; whence wild pears were named _apioi_. (_Apios_, a pear-tree; _apion_, a pear.)"