REPORTS OF COMMITTEES. 209 



Garden Pea, by Mr. Tesckemacher ; and a Historical 

 Sketch of the Society, by Gen. Dearborn ; with minute 

 descriptions of the fruits and flowers illustrated, and full 

 reports of the business meetings and exhibitions up to 

 the close of the year 1851. On the completion of this 

 volume the Society returned to the former style of pub- 

 lishing its Transactions ; and the annual pamphlet was 

 made up of the reports of the committees to award pre- 

 miums, with the schedule of those offered for the next 

 year. The brief remarks at first prefixed to the re- 

 ports of the awards by the Fruit, Flower, Vegetable, 

 and Garden Committees have gradually expanded into 

 valuable records of the progress in these departments 

 from year to year, sometimes embodying interesting 

 papers on the cultivation of plants, and descriptions of 

 new fruits, flowers, and vegetables by members of the 

 committees and others. Many special reports have been 

 published, among the most important of which are a 

 Report on the Distribution of Seeds by the Patent Of- 

 fice, by Professor Russell; the Report of the Special 

 Committee to confer with the Trustees of Mount Au- 

 burn in 1858; several reports on the Alimentation of 

 Birds, particularly the Robin, by Professors Jenks and 

 Russell ; and a Report on the Causes of the Injurious 

 Effects upon Vegetation of the Winter and Spring of 

 1871-72. Since 1856 the inaugural addresses of the 

 presidents, and the reports of the treasurer, which had 

 previously been only occasionally published, have been 

 regularly comprised in the Transactions. 



The founders of the Society entertained the hope 

 that it might at some day diffuse horticultural informa- 

 tion through a regularly published journal. Gen. Dear- 

 born, in a letter to the Vicomte H6ricart de Thury, 



