1896.] TRANSACTIONS. 17 



cold ; but the wood of Pear-tree is as near iron-clad as aught 

 that vegetates, in gelid contentment laughing to scorn the wild- 

 est caprices of the mercury. Yet now, for the tirst time in 

 more than Thirty Years have these trusty standards, Louise 

 Bonne, St. Ghislain and Washington, failed to yield specimens 

 enough for Exhibition, while honest old Bosc and Winter Nelis 

 are in like significant default. There is no manifest ditierence, 

 in this respect, between the varieties peculiar to Autumn or 

 Winter, You may tell me to possess my soul in patience, for 

 that all will come out aright by another year. That answer 

 might suffice for the individual ; but, as Secretary of a Society 

 reputable and expert as this, I am bound to put you upon 

 inquiry into the cause for this almost entire failure of a fruit, 

 hitherto so uniformly fecund and of unfailing reliance. We 

 assume, from long experience, that in what are styled "odd 

 years," numerically, the Baldwin, in especial among Apples, 

 will withhold its product. But the Pear was never known to 

 sulk, in that way ; its prevailing characteristic being its certainty 

 of bearing, and its worst fault that it is apt to yield in profusion 

 each and every year. May we not well ask those who are to 

 succeed us, as Horticulturists, who will possess manifold aids 

 from special science and training that were unknown or denied 

 to their forebears, to search out this all-important problem to the 

 end that Worcester County may count upon its crop of fruit 

 with as perfect assurance from fiiilure as upon its annual harvest 

 of ice ! 



"A little field well tilled!" The tillage may enure to the 

 benefit of the individual owner, as why should it not ! or, so 

 rewarding his industry and thrift, possess him of facts where- 

 from to build up an improved Horticultural Science. It cannot 

 be charged against your Secretary that, in the long series of 

 Reports which he has been privileged to deliver, from this place, 

 he has ever avowed faith in the worship of Mammon as the 

 whole, or even chief, duty of the Horticultural man. Yet there 

 is no sin in a profit somewhat short of skin for skin, if you have 

 a superfluous harvest to barter; since even priestcraft, whose 

 trade it is to lull uneasy souls, encourages gambling in the 

 chances of attaining futures of bliss. Now I have been shown 



