1880.] TRANSACTIONS. I 



fraternal affection he Imslied in this Hall, thfft '^\^tnesscs oui;-~^ 

 Annual Meetinij; for the iirst time since the death of Daniel r-'i 

 Waldo Lincoln ! ''^' C >> ^'^V • I 



Jastlj eulogized as he was at the mortuary gatherings of "^^Z 

 Municipal, or Business Corporations, which had latterly almost 

 monopolized his energetic devotion ; and perhaps too exclusively 

 claimed, at the recent Fair of the New England Agricultural 

 Society ; I should be false, alike to his memory and to myself, 

 were 1 not to assert, in this presence, that, above all, he was a 

 Horticulturist ! From the time, almost a half-century ago, when, 

 a mere lad, I was trusted to pass the buds with which he was 

 perpetuating all choicer varieties of the Peach : — until, but a few 

 weeks since, he was inquiring with deep interest about the 

 Azalea Mollis, just then blooming for tlie first time in Elm 

 Park. Throughout tliat entire period, — of Fifty years in dura- 

 tion, — his tastes inclined him, as undeviatingly as the needle 

 points to the pole, to our favorife pursuit. Diverted from it, as 

 he necessarily was, of later years, by engrossing occupations, he 

 was never insensible to the attractions of those rarer flowers or 

 fruits, whereof the enterprise or skill of man has, recently, been 

 so prolific. An inherited responsibility was nobly upheld ; and 

 no citizen of Worcester, qualified to judge, could tell from the 

 appearance of the homestead, that there had been a death or a 

 succession. If an eye, more than ordinarily observant, could 

 detect any change, it would have been in an obvious tendency to 

 the consolidation of forms and varieties in harmony with 

 synchronous fashion. 



Mr. Lincoln's taste for Horticulture was innate. And his 

 associations, from maturer youth, conduced to the development 

 of his natural inclinations. Sitting at the feet of Dr. Oliver 

 Fiske, — that Gamaliel of our local Floriculture and Pomology, — 

 he early became familiar with the traditions of the fathers ; and 

 acquired the practical knowledge which that kindly old man was- 

 happy to in) part to those for whom he took a fancy. Of D?'^ 

 Fiske it was, that William Lincoln thus wrote in his History of 

 Worcester : 



"From this period," (A. D. 1821), "an increasing defect in the 

 sense of heaiing, induced him to retire from busy life, and devote Lim- 



