18 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1886. 



may it not be in the later Autumn ? Now there could scarcely 

 be a limit to the possibilities of this traffic if left to be controlled 

 by demand and supply. The capacity of our Orchards can 

 be enlarged to any extent, occupying profitably land now suffered 

 to grow up to white birch or scrub oak. Shipping might once 

 more crowd our idle harbors; even sails renewing their use and 

 again whitening the seas. But, then ! Canada and Nova Scotia 

 grow as good fruit as Maine or Massachusetts, at their best. 

 Must not their home industry be encouraged ? will be the cry of 

 the Canuck or Blue-nose demagogue. Must not our local inter- 

 ests be " protected " ? the interests of those precious farmers, 

 anxious concern for whose welfare deprives the disinterested poli- 

 tician of his needed sleep. And so will ensue discrimination 

 against us in those markets wherein, as our own laws preclude 

 us from buying one thing, we will not be allowed to sell 

 another. 



The Pomologist, in this latter generation, is literally between 

 the devil and the deep sea. The juice of Pyrus Malus^ in the 

 eye of the ascetic, becomes malum in se ; and by enactment of 

 tlie bigot, with whom virtue is the restriction of his fellow, it is 

 speedily transformed into malum proliibitum. The saints can 

 abstain from anything, if they so elect; but no! is not philan- 

 thropy the enjoyment that we derive from the misfortunes of our 

 friends. The fox might not miss his own brush so much were 

 the entire Reynard family tail-less. The juice of the grape is 

 out-lawed ; — even the communion-table of the Son of God having 

 become too orthodox to admit an element for whose manufacture 

 He chose to work his earliest miracle. Christianity, with Christ 

 eliminated, is the entertainment to which the farmer and 

 orchardist is invited by theology run mad. But, if you let alone 

 the juice, whether of apple or grape, — what can you do ? What 

 will you be allowed to do with the "original package"? Just 

 now, it so happened that, throughout broad England, there is a 

 dearth. An uupropitious season has lessened the English crop of 

 fruit by half. But the trouble is far otherwise at home, in our 

 own Worcester County. In this great apple-producing region, 

 there is rather what the French term embarras des richesseSj — 

 too much of a good thing. Wherever you go, there is visible on 



