As a garden tree the Pear is not only to be grown for its fruit, but as a most ornamental tree. Though the individual flowers are not, perhaps, so handsome as the Apple blossoms, yet the growth of the tree is far more elegant; and an old Pear tree, with its curiously roughened bark, its upright, tall, pyramidal shape, and its sheet of snow-white blossoms, is a lovely ornament in the old gardens and lawns of many of our country houses. It is by some considered a British tree, but it is probably only a naturalized foreigner, originally introduced by the Romans. FOOTNOTES: [200:1] The Warden was sometimes spoken of as different from Pears. Sir Hugh Platt speaks of "Wardens _or_ Pears." PEAS. (1) _Iris._ Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas Of Wheat, Rye, Barley, Vetches, Oats, and Pease. _Tempest_, act iv, sc. 1 (60). (2) _Carrier._ Peas and Beans are as dank here as a dog. _1st Henry IV_, act ii, sc. 1 (9). (_See_ BEANS.) (3) _Biron._ This fellow picks up wit, as pigeons Pease. _Love's Labour's Lost_, act v, sc. 2 (315). (4) _Bottom._ I had rather have a handful or two of dried Peas. _Midsummer Night's Dream_, act iv, sc. 1 (41). (5) _Fool._ That a shealed Peascod? _King Lear_, act i, sc. 4 (219). (6) _Touchstone._ I remember the wooing of a Peascod instead of her. _As You Like It_, act ii, sc. 4 (51). (7) _Malvolio._ Not yet old enough to be a man, nor young enough for a boy; as a Squash is before 'tis a Peascod, or a Codling when 'tis almost an Apple. _Twelfth Night_, act i, sc. 5 (165). (8) _Hostess._ Well, fare thee well! I have known thee these twenty-nine years come Peascod time. _2nd Henry IV_, act ii, sc. 4 (412). (9) _Leontes._ How like, methought, I then was to this kernel, This Squash, this gentleman. _Winter's Tale_, act i, sc. 2 (159). (10) _Peascod, Pease-Blossom, and Squash_--Dramatis personæ in _Midsummer Night's Dream_. There is no need to say much of Peas, but it may be worth a note in passing that in old English we seldom meet with the word Pea. Peas or Pease (the Anglicised form of Pisum) is the singular, of which the plural is Peason. "Pisum is called in Englishe a Pease;" says Turner-- "Alle that for me thei doo pray, Helpeth me not to the uttermost day The value of a Pese." _The Child of Bristowe_, p. 570. And the word was so used in and after Shakespeare's time, as by Ben Jonson-- "A pill as small as a pease."--_Magnetic Lady._