22 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1889. 



because of conceded superiority in qualit}^ ; fecundity ; hardi- 

 ness, or general adaptation to a diversity of climates; he would 

 restrict liiinsclf, as follows : — Bartlett, Bosc, Cornice, Winter 

 Nelis, Josephine de Malines. For the benetit of the children, 

 whose multiplication, to the shame of New England ! is so fash- 

 ionably discouraged, there should be space devoted to St. Ghislain 

 and Washington ; palatable enongli to their elders, but of which, 

 ripening and falling from the tree for a whole month, you can at 

 any time see the boys and girls searching the ground in eager ap- 

 petite for windfalls. The noblest of all late pears, that should 

 grace the Christmas table, has been suffered to fall into oblivion 

 because of a presumed, perhaps real, tendency to blight. But 

 anyone who would like to know how good a pear can bo, when 

 in its perfection, has but to grow and ripen Glout Mor9eau as it 

 was shown long years since by John C. Ripley, of perennial 

 renown in this Hall. 



It should be a subject for earnest congratulation that every 

 effort, whether open or covert, to prevent the Society of Ameri- 

 can Florists taking a position of direct hostility to the levy of 

 customs-duties upon the importation of Foreign Bulbs, &c., &c., 

 met with such signal failure. If there is aught in the practice or 

 science of politics, whereto American Horticulture should be 

 swift to acknowledge its obligation, it is the fundamental principle 

 of free and unrestricted commerce. The absurd effort to stay 

 the invasion and ravages of Phylloxera vastatrix, by an absolute 

 prohibition throughout the Continent of Europe of all traffic in 

 vines or cuttings, succumbed to the sudden and inglorious fate that 

 it merited. The American Hog (the quadruped !) is peremptorily 

 excluded from Germany : but Trichince multiply and swarm in 

 the intestines of the warrior descendents of Arminius. We 

 invite and, if possible, assimilate : where we cannot cure, we 

 endure. Just reflect, for an instant, upon the floral wealth 

 whereof we should deprive ourselves, if we gave heed to that 

 most virulent of all lunacies that America should surround her- 

 self with an insuperable wall ! Think of the countless array of 

 brilliant, hardy shrubs that Japan has yielded to our prying 



