1885. 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



347 



Forcing Strawberries. — Mr. Thomas Foulds, 

 whose inquiries brought so many excellent re- 

 sponses on Forcing Strawberries, desires to thank 

 friends for their prompt kindnesses. Through 

 his distinguished employer, Mr. Wm. Singerly, 

 proprietor of the Philadelphia Record, a large 

 house has been built to test their experiences. 



and the results will be recorded in our columns. 



Mr. Singerly, like Messrs. Childs, Harding, and 

 other owners of the leading Philadelphia news- 

 papers, is a rare lover of gardening. He has 

 over seven thousand feet of glass already on his 

 grounds. It took this year over 30,000 plants to 

 fill the flower beds in the garden. 



Horticultural Societies. 



COMMUNICATIONS. 



AMERICAN POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Address by Hon. Marshall P. Wilder, at the 20th Session 



of the American Pomological Society. 



(Concluded froiu page 318.) 



RULES OF POMOLOGY. 



Nothing has afforded me more gratification than 

 the favor with which our Rules of Pomology and 

 the Reform in the Nomenclature of our Fruits 

 have been received. 



Soon after the close of our last session, we sent 

 out a thousand circulars containing these Rules, 

 together with the suggestions of the President in 

 regard to the much- needed reform in the nomen- 

 clature of fruits. These were sent to the Agri- 

 cultural, Horticultural, and Fruit Growers' Asso- 

 ciations, and to the leading nurserymen of our 

 country. Some were also sent to foreign lands. 

 The favor with which these have been received 

 both at home and abroad has been remarkable, 

 showing that the time had arrived when, by gen- 

 eral consent, this reform should be made ; and 

 thus our Society has the honor of instituting it as 

 an example for the pomological world. When we 

 reflect on the long, senseless, and sometimes 

 vulgar and ridiculous names by which so many of 

 our most beautiful fruits are known, our indigna- 

 tion is so aroused that we desire to blot them from 

 our memory forever. Some have thought this 

 spirit might be too aggressive. All reforms are 

 more or less so ; but when we think of the irrele- 

 vant and inappropriate names by which many of 

 our fruits are known, we feel the importance of 

 keeping up our warfare until the victory is won, 

 and all our catalogues are purged of these im- 

 proprieties. As I before felt, I still feel it my duty, 

 as President of the American Pomological Society, 

 to urge a reform in the names of fruits, avoiding all 

 long, superfluous, inappropriate, indelicate, ostenta- 

 tious, or unmeaning titles ; and if we cannot change 



objectionable names already applied, at least to 

 avoid them in the future. Hundreds of fruits once 

 known in our catalogues have become obsolete 

 for want of good properties, and so it will be in 

 the future, and we shall retain only those which, 

 by their excellent quality and adaptation to our 

 situation and wants, are worthy of extensive culti- 

 vation. Like the Baldwin apple, the Bartlett 

 pear, the Concord grape, and other renowned 

 fruits, let such varieties be dedicated to perpetual 

 remembrance by appropriate names, and thus let 

 us hand down to future generations a system of 



! nomenclature pure and plain in its diction, perti- 

 tinent and proper in its application, and which 



I shall be an example, not only for fruits, but for 

 other products of the earth . Let us have no more 

 names of generals, colonels, captains, presidents, 

 governors, monarchs, kings or princes, mammoths 

 or Tom Thumbs, or such titles as Nonsuch, Seek- 

 nofurther, Neplus-ultra, Hogpen, Sheepnose, Big 

 Bob, Ironclad, Legal Tender, Sucker State, or 

 Stump-the- World. These were suggestions made 

 in my last address, to which I still adhere and 

 from which I have nothing to take back. The 

 terms Pearmain, Pippin, Beurre, Doyenne, Bon 

 Chretien, eie., applied to apples and pears, once 

 described classes of fruit which are now so con- 

 fused and blended that the names have lost their 

 significance. The cases are very few where a 

 single word will not form a better name for a 

 fruit than two or more. These reforms have been 

 adopted in the Catalogue of the American Pomo- 

 logical Society, and other prominent horticultural 

 and pomological societies have voted to adopt 

 the improved nomenclature, and I desire to ask 

 the cooperation of all pomological and horticul- 

 tural societies in this and other countries in 

 carrying out this important reform. It has been 

 suggested that the work might be carried farther 

 than has been done in the catalogue of the Pomo- 

 logical Society ; as, for instance, by substituting 



