1874.] REPORT OF SECRETARY. 63 



Committee of Nomenclature he assumed almost the whole responsibility, 

 for which indeed no other was so well fitted. Homer sometimes nodded. 

 Nov is it strange that the burden of advancing years should have at times 

 affected the recollection of our friend, suffering him to fall into the snare 

 shrewdly but good-naturedly planned to entrap him. But it is safe to sa}' 

 that those who ventui-ed to differ from him, in naming or identifying 

 varieties or species, whether of flower, fruit or vegetable, in all which he 

 was equally proficient, had need to know well their ground. What he 

 deemed probable was pretty likely to be as he thought. What he asserted 

 for a fact was generally found, by reference to Downing or Burr, to be 

 sustained by the preponderance of authority. 



Neither the Horticultural Society nor the community will ever justly 

 estimate their debt to Mr. Earle for his labors to introduce new flowers or 

 fruits. He was an assiduous student of the foreign Catalogue.s — keeping 

 alive his familiarity with French that he might the more freely corre- 

 spond with Leroy and his compatriots. One of the latest, as it was the 

 greatest of his acquisitions, was that superb Pear — the Doyenne du 

 •Comice. Of his being the first to make this variety known in Worcester, 

 he never wearied of speaking to your Secretary, whensoever its name was 

 repeated in his hearing. 



But his place upon our committee is unfilled, and his name upon our 

 rolls no longer elicits a response. Yet his fruits will continue to depend 

 from the bough, reminding us of his good deeds, and his portrait, upon 

 the walls of this goodly Hall of Flora, appropriate!}^ commemorates the 

 completion of a work that he would have rejoiced in, but was not spared 

 to see. May that speaking likeness ever bring back to us a quickening 

 sense of his cheering presence. May it also stimulate, at least in our 

 younger members, the ambition to partake of his enthusiasm and to rival 

 his success! 



All which is respectfully submitted, 



EDWAED WINSLOW LINCOLN, 



Sec7-etary. 

 Hall of Flora, November 4, a.d. 1874. 



