WESTERN NEW YORK HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 443 



"New York, at the World's Columbian Pair, was the marvelous care in the handling, which 

 resulted in the perfect preservation of the bloom upon every cluster. The shiny sur- 

 faces of most of the potatoes shown at the Fair were examples of the unvvisdoca of fol- 

 lowing the pernicious practices of polishing the surfaces. The habit should be 

 condemned. 



And now a last word about the display of culinary art in despoiling fruits of their 

 distinguishing flavor in tatting them for the palate. Is it just the thing to do, after we 

 have expended all our energies in fertilizing the soil and cross-fertilizing the blossoms, 

 and have given the highest cultivation to produce in a strawberry the most delicate 

 flavor, to stamp out every vestige of that flavor by smothering the fruit in cream and 

 sugar? Is it just the proper thing to take our fruits as we have developed them, which 

 aflford us a wide range of delicious flavors, to so manipulate them in the process of 

 canning as to render it impossible to distinguish one variety from another, or even one 

 species from another, because of the use of rich sucrose syrup, in which they are envel- 

 oped? The suggestion, perhaps, is sufficient. 



There is a grand field for man's noblest endeavors in weaving into attractive combi- 

 nations the elements of beauty and good taste which Nature provides as working mate- 

 rial, but our forms and originations must always acknowledge Nature's own supremacy 

 when at her best, or else that which we aim to make a model of attraction shall appear 

 only as an excrescence on the bosom of the earth. He who cherishes a desire to gain 

 laurels in the art that does mend Nature, must himself live near to Nature's heart. 



Mr. L. B. Pierce (Ohio) thought there was a middle ground in the matter of pruning 

 evergreens. Only a day or two before, he bad been a visitor at Dosoris on Long Island, 

 and spent a half day with Mr. William Falconer in looking at the beautiful evergreens 

 of a hundred different varieties that were growing around the home of Charles A. Dana. 

 They were all kept within bounds by cutting back the leader two-thirds and allowing 

 a new one to form from the uppermost bud left. The end bud of the leading shoots 

 of the upper third of the trees was pinched oflf just after commencing growth in the 

 spring— any straggling shoots below were pinched in the same manner. The trees made 

 a thick, rank growth, and were oblate-conical in form. They were annually manured 

 in the spring with the stable manure that had been scattered on the lawn during the 

 winter. The trees were in this way kept within bounds, and at the same time lost none 

 of their beauty or characteristic traits. At the best, evergreens only preserve their 

 highest beauty for a short time, and when we talked about natural beauty in the 

 evergreen, we could only refer to the brief period of its youth, for, w^ith very few 

 exceptions, most evergreens left to nature's ways, outgrow their beauty in a few years. 



Mr. D. R. Rhind of Canandaigua said that circumstances alter cases; many trees 

 were out of place if left entirely to themselves on a neatly-kept lawn. On a lawn kept 

 closely mowed and dotted with flower beds, big, shaggy evergreens were out of place; 

 trimmed to a certain extent, and kept low down on the lawn, they made an excellent 

 back-ground for flower beds, and were in accord with the general beauty. A flower- 

 bed under a huge spreading elm would be out of place, but close beside a nicely 

 trimmed evergreen it was appropriate and could be made very beautiful. 



ARE NOVELTIES WORTH THEIR COST? 



BY PROP. L. H. BAILEY, CODL.EGE OP AGRICULTURE, CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 



It is a perennial question, this asking if novelties in fruit pay; and yet it is never 

 settled. The manner of answering the question seems always to be the same; the 

 respondent cites his own experience with the new varieties, with an inclination to dwell 

 most upon those which he considers to be dishonest or unworthy; and so it comes that 

 there are as many opinions of the " novelty question " — as the discussion has come to 

 be called — as there are persons who try to answer it, with a tendency, always, to decry 

 the introduction of new things. It is evident that the fundamental merits of the ques- 

 tion can never be determined from individual experiences of a certain number of nov- 

 elties, for it is rare if any two experiences agree upon even the same variety. If there 

 is not some broader and scientific basis of judgment, the question may as well be 

 dropped forever. 



What we really need to ask is this: Is there a constant tendency for new varieties 

 to surpass the old? Or, in other words, have we yet reached the limit of improvement 



