14 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1886. 



The Massachusetts Horticultural Society reposes in a fame 

 that is world-wide : — a fair repute merited by a long career 

 wherein all honorable Floriculture and Pomology were wisely 

 encouraged. It may savor of presumption to assert a difference 

 of opinion from a Society so venerable, guided as it has been for 

 Fifty years by the Apostle and Patriarch of American Horticul- 

 ture ; yet, bearing in mind that 



^^ Fortes ante Agamemnona vixeru7it" 



it should not be inexcusable to inquire if it is legitimate Pomol- 

 ogy to invite a competition in specimens of choice Anjou and 

 Winter Nelis, on the 14th-lYth of September ! Does not that 

 Society impair its credit for sound judgment, when it persists, 

 not merely in countenancing, but in positively inviting the dis- 

 play of fruit but half grown or lacking months of attaining 

 maturity. Your Secretary is earnest in pointing out this grave 

 error ; long since happily discarded in our own practice ; be- 

 cause of the serious influence emanating from such an authority. 

 So long as the Massachusetts Society persists in promoting the 

 exhibition of Winter Nelis and Anjou in September ; so long 

 will every Cattle Show that feebly dabbles in imperfect pomol- 

 ogy, justify its own blundering efforts by such an illustrious ex- 

 ample. It cannot be necessary to recite the expressed opinion 

 of the late John Milton Earle, — a name ever to be respected in 

 these Halls, — that fruit matures more within the last month of 

 its duration upon the tree than throughout its whole previous ex- 

 istence. And just in that word maturity may be found the la- 

 tent essence of the matter. Growth is one thing: but the tex- 

 ture of the flesh is only confirmed by lapse of time, within 

 which period supervene juiciness and flavor, — this latter so inex- 

 plicable yet indispensable. As age lends bouquet to the juice of 

 the Grape, for no Human Asceticism can countervail Natural 

 Law ! so do the lingering rays of an Autumnal sun confer 

 beauty and aroma upon Pears as they ripen to perfection. The 

 festival of Thanksgiving could illy spare two entire months of 

 development; and man should neither expect nor exact it, even 

 in an age of unreason wherein the millennium is the creation of 

 a statute. 



