78 "WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1881. 



rived from the Eighteenth (18th) Session of the American 

 Pomological Society, it is believed that your delegates would 

 unanimously concur in and perhaps adopt for their own the 

 conclusions of the Boston Advertiser : 



" The meetings at Hawthorne Hall have been especially profitable, 

 and will result in promoting the still more rapid development of one 

 of the most wide awake and progressive arts of our time." 



At Agricultural Institutes ; at the stated meetings of Town 

 Societies ; and at every reunion of the local Granges ; discus- 

 sion is th spirit, good or evil, that possesses the occasion. 

 Science and speculation ; practice, or theory, — term them which 

 you will ; contend, in more or less profitable rivalry, to enlighten 

 or confound the audiences then and there gathered So many 

 and so various have been the themes essayed, that it may almost 

 as well be asked, as it was Two Thousand Years ago, — " Is any- 

 thing whereof may be said this is new ?" 



" Threshing that old bundle of straw again !" exclaimed the 

 astute Editor, as the orator designated " Honest," to denote the 

 difference between his fellow-townsmen and himself, brought 

 down his well-worn flail upon the empty sheaves of a Prohibitory 

 Tariff. 



"Some brilliant flashes of silence!" said the reverend Wit, 

 summing up in an epigram the unwonted deportment of Macau- 

 lay at a fashionable dinner. 



" There is too much gab, already !" replied the quiet graduate 

 from Yale, when solicited to contribute for the foundation of a 

 school of Oratory at his Alma Mater. - 



And, to come to the point ! are the calling to order ; the 

 installation of a Chairman ; the formality and starch of a set 

 meeting ; listening to what you are told and believing what 

 accords with your previous convictions, — "only that and nothing 

 more"; are these, one or all, fundamental conditions of Horti- 

 cultural existence ? Do not the Summer Exhibitions answer as 

 good a purpose ; with their freedom from ceremony or con- 

 straint ; whereat the tongue wags at will, and people come and 

 go, moving hither or thither at their convenience, as best suits 

 them ! 



A list of the topics that have been considered, during the last 



