74 meeting, monday, may 1. 



Kegular Meeting, Monday, May 1, 1882. 

 Meeting this evening at 7.30 o'clock. The President 

 in the chair. The records of the last meetino^ read. Do- 

 nations and correspondence announced. 



o 



The letters from Mr. George E. Davenport, Corr. Sec'y 

 of the Middlesex Institute, tendering an invitation to 

 unite in a joint Field Meeting to be held at the Middlesex 

 Fells, and suggesting June 17 as the day of Meeting, 

 and from the Boxford Natural History Society, accept- 

 ins: an invitation from the Institute to visit Salem, were 

 referred to the Field Meetinoj committee. 



'& 



The President referred to the previous meeting held by 

 the Institute in commemoration of this day, tracing back 

 the origin of its observance to remote antiquity and allu- 

 ding briefly to the views of the early settlers respecting 

 the festivities of its occurrence, to whom they were ex- 

 tremely distasteful ; soon after the landing of the Pil- 

 grims at Plymouth, events occurred in their neighborhood 

 which called forth an official denunciation by the colonial 

 authorities ; the celebration at Ma-re-mount, now Mount 

 Wollaston, Quincy, under the direction of Thomas Mor- 

 ton of Cliflford's Inn in 1626 was cited as a familiar illus- 

 tration. Times have changed, and May day morning is 

 frequently observed to welcome the sun's return, the 

 burstinof of the buds and the birth of the flowers. 



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Mr, John H. Sears read an interesting paper giv- 

 ing the date of the appearance of several of our spring 

 flowers ; also a list of those that have been noticed in bloom 

 the present season. The following is an abstract : — 



