HOKTICULTUEAL SOCIETIES. 45 



library, a botanical cabinet, and a professor of botany and horti- 

 culture. For many years the societ}" was conducted with much 

 energy; but later, the interest in it declined, and about 1837 it 

 ceased to exist. Dr. Torrey, the eminent botanist, was the last 

 president. 1 



The next horticultural society in the United States was the 

 Pennsj'lvania Society, organized at Philadelphia on the 20th 

 of November, 1827, and chartered by the State on the 24th of 

 March, 1831 ; its first schedule of premiums having been adopted 

 January 4, 1830, and the first annual display held in the autumn of 

 the same year. More fortunate than its predecessor in New York, 

 it has gone on with increasing prosperity until the present day ; so 

 that it is the oldest horticultural society now existing in the coun- 

 try too well known to need any thing said here, beyond express- 

 ing the hope that its progress, and its beneficial influence on horti- 

 culture, may be even greater in the future than in the past. 



Two other horticultural societies were formed in the United States 

 previously to the organization of the Massachusetts society, the 

 Domestic Horticultural Society, at Geneva, N.Y., in 1828, having 

 for its field of operation ten counties in Western New York, 2 and 

 holding its meetings and exhibitions alternately at Geneva, Lyons, 

 and Canandaigua ; 8 and the Albany Horticultural Society, formed 

 in 1829, but a short time before the formation of the Massa- 

 chusetts Horticultural Society, of which Judge Buel was the first 

 president. 4 Neither of these two societies existed more than a few 

 years ; but the Domestic Society held an exhibition at Geneva, 

 July 3, 1835, 5 and a fine autumnal show of fruits, flowers, and 

 vegetables at Canandaigua on the 30th of September of the same 

 year. 6 In the By-Laws of the Massachusetts Horticultural So- 

 ciety, adopted in 1836, the Committee on the Synonymes of 

 Fruits was directed to facilitate an exchange of specimens with 

 the Albany as well as with the Philadelphia and New York horti- 

 cultural societies, for the purpose of establishing their synonymes. 



It would be unjust to pass over the inception of horticultural 

 societies in the United States without some allusion to the proto- 



1 American Journal of Science and Art, Vol. VIII. p. 398; Hovey's Magazine, Vol. IL 

 pp. 391, 461, Vol. III. p. 389; Letter of John J. Thomas. 

 New England Farmer, Vol. VII. p. 174. . 7 , i : 

 Hovey's Magazine, Vol. V. p. 12. 

 New England Farmer, Vol. VII. pp. 207, 245. 

 Hovey's Magazine, Vol. I. p. 311. 

 Ibid., p. 43i. 



