34 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



The most effectual means Ave have been able to devise as a protection against 

 this danger is to take up for revision — say at the June and December meetings 

 — such lists upon the catalogues as shall tlien be most nearly in season, as, for 

 instance, small fruits, cherries and pcrliaps plums, in June, and the otiier 

 classes of fruits at the December session, making a record of everything note- 

 worthy respecting any of the varieties, and also inviting the proposal of additional 

 yarieties for places in the catalogue. At the annual meeting a person or a 

 committee should be designated in each district of tlic State, to be known as a 

 local or district fruit committee, and charged with the duty of embodying in 

 an annual report to the society at its annual meeting any and all facts bearing 

 upon the status of varieties of fruits, as well as any other useful facts of a 

 pomological character arising in their districts respectively. 



Tiic society sliould also S3lect a standing fruit committee to hold over, from 

 year to yenr, during the pleasure of the society, to be composed of persons 

 selected with special reference to their standing as pomologists, and should be 

 exclusivelv charged with the duty of preparing an annual revision of the cata- 

 logue in time for its annual publication in the volume of transactions of the 

 society — such revision to be performed in the light of tlie information conveyed 

 by the discussions of the society, with the aid of tlic reports of the local com- 

 mittees, togetiier witli their own personal acquaintance with, and judgment of 

 the questions involved. 



In proposing, as we in effect do, that the society shall abandon its earlier 

 practice in this direction, and assume a work which, as has already been freely 

 admitted, we can never even hope to "finish, we may, witli great propriety, be asked 

 — what important advantages are to be secured by so essential a departure from 

 the line of our earlier practice? We reply — our present lists fail of the designed 

 effect, because they supply no means from which the planter may form an. in- 

 telligent judgment as to the soundness of our recommendations, nor yet as to 

 their adaptedness to his special wants, as they merely select a certain number 

 of sorts, arbitrarily, and offer them for the most part unqualitiedly. On the 

 other liand, the proposed catalogue specifies the valuable qualities of each variety, 

 as well as the degree of each quality ; and, in so doing, supplies just the kind 

 of information required by the planter to enable him to determine as to its 

 capacity to meet liis wants. We may also add, instead of the meagre lists at 

 present recommended, the proposed catalogue would doubtless grow, by gradual 

 accretion, to include, and thus compare with each other, nearly or quite all the 

 really useful and valuable varieties introduced and yn'oved in the state ; while 

 tliose su])erseded and dropped from cultivation, would, in the course of revision, 

 yield their places to otiier and better sorts. The results of all this would 

 naturally be, that tlie catalogue of the society would come to be considered as 

 a source of information from which all requiring aid in this direction would be 

 able to draw the material to form tlicir lists ; eacli making his selections to 

 meet the special purposes he may have in view. In fact, to the great mass of 

 planters, it might come to stand in place of the voluminous "fruit books," 

 which but rarely find a place upon the tables of the great mass of orchardists. 

 For such ])urpose, it migiit perhaps come to be published, as a pamphlet, 

 separately from the society's transactions, as is now the case with the cata- 

 logue of the American Pomological Society. 



\\\i wish to be understood as not claimini; any considerable decrreo of origin- 

 ality in the devising of the i)lan of the proposed catalogue, inasmncli as tliat 

 of the American Pomological Society is one of the chief sources from Avhich 



