The reader will discover no noteworthy characters in the description
of this pear; nor does the accompanying illustration make the variety
particularly alluring, although the color-plate scarcely does the fruits
justice in either size or color. The variety is to be found in many old
orchards in eastern America, but was long since relegated by pear-growers
to the limbo of nurserymen’s catalogs. The only reason for giving it a
place in The Pears of New York is that the variety was once prominent,
and references to it and comparisons with it are so common in horticultural
literature that pear-growers are certain to want to know something about
it. As the following description shows, the variety is but mediocre in tree
and fruit.
Early in the eighteenth century M. Lévéque, an architect, acquired
possession of an estate near Fontenay, France. A number of pear seedlings
were growing upon this property, one of which:was so good as to attract
M. Lévéque’s attention and he began propagating it in 1828. Later he
distributed cions of the variety to his friends under the name Poire de Fon-
tenay. Soon afterward the name was changed to Jalousie de Fontenay.
Leroy took the variety to the garden of the Horticultural Society of Angers
about 1835, from which place it was still more widely disseminated. It
soon found its way to America where it gained early popularity. In 1862
the American Pomological Society listed this variety in its fruit-catalog
under the name Jalousie de Fontenay, but shortened the name, in 1883,
to Fontenay. In 1899, however, the name disappeared from this catalog
and has never been replaced.
