1881.] TRANSACTIONS. 77 



cussions at the formal meetings of the Pomological Society, were 

 a source and centre of attraction, listeners deriving pleasure and 

 profit from the frank narration of experiences sometimes similar, 

 but more often foreign to our own. It might be regretted that 

 the delegates from this Society were so diffident of their position, 

 or so chary of imparting the knowledge derived from years of 

 personal labor and rigid' trial. In considering " Grape Culture," 

 for example, gentlemen from Boston or its immediate vicinity, 

 magnified or depreciated, exalted or pulled down, in the name of 

 Massachusetts, varieties that some of us, in Worcester, gather 

 fully ripe, every year. Your Secretary^ not hearing those state- 

 ments, of course could not essay the correction of erroneous im- 

 pressions. But he takes this occasion to declare his implicit faith 

 in his own ability to mature perfectly, in the open air, for suc- 

 cessive years, with as much certainty as the Pear, the Delaware^ 

 the best of the Rogers Hybrids^ aye and even the lona. True, 

 some have a sunny exposure throughout the day and are besides 

 sheltered beneath a broad coping that, jutting from the wall, is 

 thus constrained to be of service as well as ornament. Others 

 are allowed and will be encouraged to twine around and over 

 trees, even the Seckel pear tree being surrendered to their em- 

 brace. None of you can have forgotten the cold — extreme for 

 the early date — which proved so destructive on the 4th and 5th 

 of October ult. Four days thereafter I plucked Grapes — a 

 Rogers — in ripe perfection, and as unharmed by the frost as 

 though the mercury had never indicated a degree more frigid 

 than sixty. Should the Seckel finally succumb to the Lindley, 

 the dead trunk may be trusted to support the vine. But they 

 are getting along amicably, to all appearance, and there is some 

 ground for the faith that the shade and warmth of the vine 

 leaves exert a reciprocal and beneficent influence upon the pear. 

 The foliage and clusters of the vine vibrate with the passing 

 breeze, and the circulation and currents of air appear to ward off 

 the attacks of mildew, which in the judgment of many, is as 

 much the result of stagnation as of aught else. But then, if you 

 must grow your grapes and pears separately, what can be easier 

 or simpler than to plant trees especially for the support of vines ? 

 Reasoning generally, and as to the sum of advantage to be de 

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