name of a very pleasant and wholesome liquor extracted from pears, in the same manner as cider is from apples. See Cyder, and Agriculture Index.

The best pears for perry, or at least the sorts which have been hitherto deemed the fittest for making this liquor, are of a tart and harsh quality. Of these the Bofbury pear, the Bareland pear, and the horse pear, are the most esteemed for perry in Worcestershire, and the squash pear, as it is called, in Gloucestershire; in both which counties, as well as in some of the adjacent parts, they are planted in the hedge-rows and most common fields. There is this advantage attending pear-trees, that they will thrive on land where apples will not do much as live, and that some of them grow to such a size, that a single pear-tree, particularly of the Bofbury and the squash kind, has frequently been known to yield, in one season, from one to four hogsheads of perry. The Bofbury pear is thought to yield the most lasting and most vinous liquor. The John pear, the Harpary pear, the Drake pear, the Mary pear, the Lullum pear, and several others of the hardiest kinds, are esteemed the best for perry, but the redder or more tawny they are, the more they are preferred. Pears, as well as apples, should be full ripe before they are ground.

Dr Beale, in his general advertisements concerning cider, subjoined to Mr Evelyn's Pomona, disapproves of Palladius's saying, that perry will keep during the winter, but that it turns sour as soon as the weather begins to be warm; and gives, as his reasons for being of a contrary opinion, that he had himself tasted at the end of summer, a very brisk, lively, and vinous liquor, made of horse pears; that he had often tried the juice of the Bofbury pear, and found it both pleasanter and richer the second year, and still more so the third, though kept only in common hogsheads, and in but indifferent cellars, without being bottled; and that a very honest, worthy, and ingenious gentleman in his neighbourhood, assured him, as of his own experience, that it will keep a great while, and grow much the stronger for keeping, if put into a good cellar and managed with due care. He imputes Palladius's error to his possibly speaking of common eatable pears, and to the perry's having been made in a very hot country; but he would have ascribed it to a more real cause, perhaps, had he pointed out the want of a thorough regular fermentation, to which it appears plainly that the ancients were entire strangers; for all their vinous liquors were medicated by boiling before they were laid up in order to be kept.