20 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1896. 



In looking around for a most suitable stock, one ever healthy 

 in itself and therefore best promising to transmit its own vigor 

 to its fosterling, your Secretary can think of no variety which 

 he would choose with such implicit trust as Howell. It is native 

 to our soil, was never known to blight, and, although bearing 

 as freely as the female parent of Earle's Bergamot, never fails 

 to develop all its offspring in sound maturity. Your Secretary 

 would try the experiment himself, instead of urging it upon 

 others, had he an idle yard square of land and were he younger. 

 So much at least is certain, that it will be a lasting reproach to 

 this Society to suffer the only variety of Pear originated by one 

 of our members, after infinite patience, a variety of great 

 promise whether you look to fecundity or quality, to perish, 

 leaving no trace. 



Apples have been originated, not accidentally, but of set pur- 

 pose, in close proximity to the City of Worcester, whose merits 

 should ensure their wide distribution ; yet which can scarcely 

 be found at all save upon the trees that first bore them. Here 

 or there might be discovered a Worcester Spy, after persistent 

 search. But who has undertaken to propagate the Dawson, 

 which arrested the attention of Charles Downing in the latter 

 years of his life, and became his study before its untimely close ! 



Superb Peaches have been placed upon our tables, from time 

 to time, grown a-nigh Elm Street in this city, which no one 

 apparently cares to perpetuate by budding; an indifference or 

 neglect that, in former years, governing the action of Horti- 

 culturists, might have cost and lost us Cooledge or the Craw- 

 fords. Now the question suggests itself if it would not be well 

 worth our while for the Society to purchase all the scions of 

 local varieties of fruit holding out at least fair promise, which 

 the owner might be induced to spare, apportioning them among 

 our Meml)ers who would agree to engraft and care for them, 

 and to exhibit their produce in this Hall ! Would not such a 

 distribution tend more directly to 



"Advance the Scieuce and encourage and promote the Practice of 

 Horticulture " 



than the award of an equivalent in premiums, in dreary monoto- 

 ny, upon the same kinds, year after year, although indeed they 



