1881.] TRANSACTIONS. 71 



past twelve months. Tlie Committees have completed their 

 tasks and the public are admitted. Do competitors ascertain the 

 awards — acquiesce — and cordially admire the display made by 

 each other ? Such may be the fact in rare instances. But how 

 is it with those wlio, finding that the first premium has been 

 awarded to their rivals, do not thank the Olympian Jove that 

 Sparta has worthier children than themselves ! Who even as- 

 sume to call the committees to account, as though the best pre- 

 miums were their especial, indisputable perquisite ? whose wan- 

 ton with-holding or non-award involves flagrant injustice to the 

 Society as well as to themselves ! Tradition assures us that such 

 persons have existed; and Science, in its record of the precession 

 of the equinoxes tells us that the laws of Nature abound in repe- 

 tition. Trials by jury are not always satisfactory. But appeals 

 to the mob are more senseless, and carry witli them less consola- 

 tion than an invocation of the Goddess of Un-Reason. The 

 judgment of the tribunal is not invariably approved: but chronic 

 discontent is transparent, and its motives are ever accredited 

 with the selfishness that is their obvious inspiration. 



Your Trustees have ordered that Flowers should be displayed 

 with their own foliage. That rule is so eminently proper 

 that the Floral Committee of the New England Agrimiltural 

 Society, last September, instructed their Chairman to advise its 

 adoption at any future exhibition in the Kink. Might it not be 

 well also, now, to determine in advance to what extent Art, or 

 artifice, shall supplement Nature ! Whether, in short, to scrimp 

 material, or in its default, wire may be substituted for the stalk 

 or stem of flowers when cut. If you should conclude that this 

 trick of the Florist, who reduces the bulk of a bouquet at the 

 cost of its life, may be tolerated, you certainly will not sanction 

 the use of such appliances in the arrangement of baskets or 

 other loose floral combinations. Capillary attraction is an essen- 

 tial condition of plant-life, and, without its aid, the bud or blos- 

 som, severed from its parent stalk, must quickly wither and die. 

 Suffer Art to foster and develop Nature : never accept it 

 instead. 



Your Corn,mittee would also submit for consideration, by the 

 Tkustees, whether it might not be better to defer, as was our 



