1875.] REPORT OP SECRETARY. 56 



setting forth the harm done by noxious insects, and praying for a remedy 

 was presented and referred to the Committee on Agriculture, whereof 

 this at least may be said in its behalf, that not all of its Members expect 

 or deserve to be Governor. Constituted, as usual, of men whose minds 

 are closed to instruction ; who exhaust knowledge by the process of Na- 

 ture in her abhorrence of a vacuum ; and who prefer to keep the narrow 

 tires of their mental organization in the deep and frozen ruts wherein 

 they have travelled from infancy ; what else could stolid Bucolism do 

 but give Charles M. Hovey, Francis Parkman, and Marshall P. Wilder 

 " leave to withdraw ! " Similar " leave " from the ^:ame source, ladies 

 and Gentlemen of the Worcester County Horticultural Society I has been 

 proffered you in the past; nor, as the best that you could do, have you 

 been slow to accept it. The ignorance which would exterminate the 

 Corvus — most useful and most persecuted of birds — through its absurd 

 chairman, relegates the Turdus migratorius to the same plane with the 

 mocking-bird or nightingale. 



His dissonant note greets the farmer's ear. 



Never from earth-worms shall you be clear ! 



A winged tramp — I always shirk, — 



Bumming my rations, but never work. 



No Canker- Worm my gizzard shall cross, 



Neither Curculio! my gain, — your loss. 



The Doryphora may take the Potato 



And, that cleaned out, fall back on Tomato. 



But the beak of this Turdus was never expended 



On noxious Insects ; nor was it intended 



That a bird so accomplished should even be harmed 



By a stroke of hard work : or even alarmed 



When the angry Pomologist fires oft" a discharge 



At the Turdus — by General Court kept at large. 



There would not seem to be any serious peril to the Commonwealth 

 involved in a concession of the prayer of the Massachusetts Horticultural 

 Society. The injury done by insects is so excessive and general, and is 

 so rapidly increasing, that every grower of Grain, or Fruit, or Vegeta- 

 bles, is personally concerned to find a check or remedy. An inquiry by 

 competent entomologists into their habits — carefully discriminating be- 

 tween the beneficial and noxious — would supply knowledge that is need- 

 ed, which could work no detriment to the State and, possibly not harm 

 even the Committee on Agriculture. 



Closely connected with this subject of Noxious Insects is a fact, if such, 

 asserted by the Constitutionnel ot Paris, France, which says that "good 

 news is being received from all the wine-growing districts. There is but 

 one cry of joy and admiration in the vineyards at the magnificent appear- 



