1890.] TRANSACTIONS. 9 



trust for public purposes and yet, in practice, being subjected to 

 an invidious discrimination. For the bounty of the Conomon- 

 wealth is lavished upon the Worcester Agricultural Society, 

 which holds a large and valuable tract of land wholly exempt 

 from taxation ; which uses that land for but a single week of the 

 entire year, at other times sub-letting for all sorts of perform- 

 ances and antics, any diversion other than agricultural, in fact, 

 from which revenue can be derived ; capping the climax by en- 

 gaging, as co-partner with that queer simulacrum — the New 

 England Agricultural Society, in the invasion of our especial 

 province, inviting a rival horticultural exhibition, of egregious 

 size and inconspicuous excellence. Our appeal for redress would 

 have been made to the General Court but for an unofficial sug- 

 gestion from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society that it was 

 not prepared, as formerly, to co-operate with this Society ; inti- 

 mating, in fact, apprehension lest, by seeking further relief, it 

 might lose present benefit. The cases are not parallel ; no Soci- 

 ety receiving State bounty for pretending to exhibitions of "Hor- 

 ticulture, Floriculture and Vegetables !" on Tremont Street. Nev- 

 ertheless, under the circumstances, your Committee felt that 

 comity, if no other consideration, required that the sense of the 

 Society should be taken, before prosecuting any definite action or 

 policy, under the formal vote. 



" What shall it profit me ? " exclaimed the cynical Shah of 

 Persia, when urged to attend the " Derby." " It is already 

 known to me that one horse can run faster than another ! " 



For well-nigh upon fifty years this Society has been placing 

 successive footfalls in the same continuous rut. We have learned 

 pretty thoroughly, in that course of time, that, other things being 

 equal, specimens of fruit from a young and thrifty orchard will 

 excel such as may be gleaned from one spent by age, overpro- 

 duction, or neglect. We have been taught ; or we might have 

 been, had we availed ourselves of the lesson apt to direct observa- 

 tion ; that the ravages of insects are irreparable ; that injury or 

 disease are waste and consequent destruction ; that the mischief 

 which we were too careless or indolent to arrest, at its first inten- 

 tion, is ever active and malignant, sapping that vitality to which, 

 under whatsoever name, — bacillus, bacteria, fungus, blight, or 



