28 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The committee on resolutions reported appropriate resolutions, thanking all 

 to whom the convention was indebted, which were adopted unanimously by the 

 meeting. 



The closing paper of the convention was upon 



HORTICULTURAL NOMENCLATURE. 

 BY T. T. LYON, SOUTH HAVEN. 



The time is quite within the recollection of many, when commercial orchards 

 were very rare ; when the named varieties of fruits, known and cultivated 

 within any given locality, were comparatively few, save, perhaps, among a very 

 few curious amateurs and collectors ; and when a full collection of the pomol- 

 •ogical works published in our language could almost be counted upon one's 

 fingers ; while such a venture as the publication of a pomological or even a 

 horticultural journal was a decided rarit), as well as a very uncertain under- 

 taking ; and the conducting a horticultural department in connection with any 

 one of the exceedingly rare agricultural journals of the period, a project hardly 

 yet in contemplation. 



Under these circumstances there were few nurseries, and the fruits of value 

 and reputation enough to require a name were generally designated in the 

 simplest and easiest manner possible ; and if, as was occasionally the case, 

 some fanciful person, without the fear of critical horticultural Solous before his 

 •eyes, ventured to express, in the name of a favorite fruit or flower, his estimate 

 of its superlative character, it was not, as to-day, so generally the case, for the 

 purpose of effecting a raid against (or into) the pockets of the gullible, but 

 merely the voicing of that very human weakness that so naturally and easily 

 leads people to overestimate and overpraise their own productions. 



Under this state of affairs the existence of an occasional Beauty, Favorite, 

 Prolific, Belle, Beurre, King, Queen, Monarch, Nonesuch, Seek-no-further, 

 Sheepnose, Cathead or Horse, could hardly have been considered a serious afflic- 

 tion, although such handles to the names of fruits will scarcely be claimed to 

 add anything to the character of the fruits they designate, or to confer dignity 

 upon what some fondly characterize as the science of horticulture. 



These times are, however, now of the long past. The interest in fruit culture, 

 in our country, has come to be very general — well nigh universal. Nurseries 

 and nurserymen's catalogues abound everywhere. Horticultural libraries are 

 frequent, and yearly becoming more and more voluminous ; and strictly horti- 

 cultural periodicals are no longer rare, while agricultural journals, newspapers, 

 and even our national department of agriculture, are being impelled by an 

 interested public and the tendency of the times to maintain departments of 

 horticulture and pomology. 



With the growth and development of these conditions, the use of horticultural 

 names has increased immensely, till the mere task of re-speaking, writing and 

 printing these needless and fanciful redundancies, has come to be irksome, 

 and even burdensome, while the egotistical fancies of originators of novelties 

 have loaded our plant and fruit catalogues with a mass of material — largely the 

 merest trash. — so cumbrous that, how to rid ourselves of it, or what disposition 

 to make of it, has become an exceedingly grave and difficult question. 



To all this we may add the farther fact that, with the increasing interest in 

 this direction, an army of experimenters has entered the field and engaged in 



