10 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1887. 



was held there to gratify Marshall P. Wilder, whose ardent 

 wish was, once more to meet those who had been his life-long 

 associates, in a pursuit not over-crowded, because its prizes are 

 few, and what there are, devoid of glitter. And to greet them, 

 if it might be, as the fitting close of a career, commencing before 

 the memory of many now living, honorable in itself, and which 

 we, his survivors, may cliaracterize as without spot or blemish. 

 Such fortune was not permitted to him; and therefore perhaps 

 to many present there appeared to be something lacking; an 

 absence of the genius loci, as it were. Boston, at least, can 

 comprehend the palpable void in the procession, heretofore so 

 auspicious, of her wonted household gods. Hovey, and Moore 

 gone; Barry not sufficiently recovered from his recent sea 

 voyage to put in an appearance ; Meehan away ; nothing of 

 John J. Thomas save his manuscript, — clear, concise, and replete 

 with intelligence as that ever has been ; Secretary Garfield 

 detained by illness ! does it not seem that the letter from Colum- 

 bus, Ohio, in the Country Gentleman, was prophetic, — wherein 

 was expressed the fear pervading Horticultural circles lest the 

 American Pomological Society had seen its best days ! 



And still Berckmans worthily succeeds the giants of old. 

 Garfield survives temporary disability. Barry, and Thomas are 

 yet of us, if not always with us. And if, in the fulness of time, 

 the torch must pass from the relaxing grasp of the former, at 

 least it will be transmitted to no incapable nor unlineal hand. 

 For the rest, — the shaping of the future will lie with the coming 

 generations. The Pomological Society, like every other institu- 

 tion of man's contrivance, will become what our children choose 

 to make it. And, as we cannot, nor would, dictate to them con- 

 cerning matters whereof they should be the better, because 

 contemporaneous, judges ; we can only guide their action or 

 opinion by our own faithful record, in which success or failure 

 shall be blazoned, as it was achieved, or suffered, in no vague or 

 dubious manner. 



The display of Fruit, as a whole, scarcely equalled that of 

 A. D. 1883, in the same city. Perhaps some of the efiect of 

 magnitude wa8 lost by reason of the ampler rooms of the Massa- 

 chusetts Charitable Mechanics, which, as experience demonstrated. 



