8 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1886. 



This evangel is not wholly novel to you, nor should it fall 

 upon your cars with an unfamiliar sound. Two years since, in 

 his Annual Report for 1884, your Secretary gave expression to 

 his own deeply-felt convictions of a similar pressing need : — 



"All these problems are speculative, — hypothetical, — exacting ex- 

 periment for a test. Some of them may well be tried in Amherst ; yet 

 location cannot but enter into the accurate determination of others. 

 Why should not this great Pomological County have an Experiment 

 Station of its own, devoted exclusively to the solution of difficulties 

 in Horticulture"? The State Bounty to our local Agricultural Societies 

 might well be devoted to its support. For ampler sustenance a portion 

 of our own income could find no more profitable use, thereby most 

 effectually 



' Advancing the science and encouraging and improving the practice of 

 Horticulture,' 



the explicit object for which we were incorporated, as so often pressed 

 upon your attention in these Reports. The Peach is grown, with 

 greater or less success, in all our lacustrine Towns.* Wheresoever its 

 culture falls short, or fails, such a Station might detect the trouble and 

 discover its remedy. Individual research, or trial, is apt to be uni- 

 lateral or prejudiced : Science is many-sided and impartial ; seeking for 

 truth, if mayhap at the bottom of a well. We now grow much fruit 

 and vegetables with marked skill and success. Is it not our 

 own fault if we omit to avail ourselves of every appliance and 

 method that may serve to detect and explain the latent reason 

 for too frequent fjiilures. The Agricultural Societies are even now 

 legally constrained to hold Institutes, by way of some practical return 

 for the State Bounty. Too often it is like threshing an old bundle of 

 straw. Few pause in the course of hard, daily labor, to note the rea- 

 sons for success or failure ; and, if the mind begins to speculate upon 

 the knotty problem, the thread of inquiry is apt to be lost in the first 

 night's sleep. Fewer still are qualified by natural bent, or by training, 

 to follow a path of original research, usually intricate, mainly obscure, 

 and where the clue is either invisible or impalpable. For all such in- 

 vestigation, — whether of Insect or Fungus ; — which shall teach us to 

 know our Insect Friends from our Insect Foes ; determining the cause 

 of Yellows in the Peach or Blight in the Pear; something more 

 searching and precise is needed than the occasional conference of 

 friends and neighbors. Something more like the keen analysis and 



* Grafton and Shrewsbury at the foot and by the shores of Quinsigamond, — 

 where, as by the inhind Lakes of Contral New York, the Grape and Puach 

 have flourished for aye ; and upon whose opposite slopes and hill-sides, in 

 conjunction with the projected School of Natural History, a Horticultural 

 Experiment Station could be essayed to the utraust advantage, at the least 

 cost, and with the most effective and sure co-operation. E. W. L. 



