22 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1895. 



right to look for a solution of this problem so vital to individual 

 thrift and public prosperity. We might worry along without 

 forest or shade trees. But would life be especially worth living, 

 throughout the frosts and snows of a New England winter, de- 

 prived of our standard fruit, as we may yet be, entirely ! Who 

 shall say, in our complete ignorance of the cause why a tree is 

 barren every other year, that it may not refuse its yield at the 

 periods when it has hitherto borne to exhaustion ! There must 

 be a reason for such regular, assured intermission, whether we 

 know it or not. The spasmodic attempts that we have made to 

 solve the mystery, — shearing of blossoms and thinning of sets, — 

 are foredoomed to failure from the first. The generation of 

 Ocneria disjxir is incessant, — endless. Still the public treasure 

 is lavished in a futile effort to suppress that infinite fecundity. 

 Pomology is left to fight its own battles, as best it may ; and 

 not a hand is lifted, not a voice raised in behalf of this most 

 important product that our soil should surely yield. This very 

 Hall is resonant with chatter and din of wordy champions who 

 kill time, if naught else, by vociferous declamation upon the 

 beneficent influence of qualified Tuberculosis upon the animal 

 and human systems. Just contrast last year with this ! There 

 is scarcely a man before me who did not gather from his Orchard 

 a superfluity of Apples wherewith to glut the Home-Market, or 

 to supply the wants of foreign consumers. But now the puzzle 

 with most of you must be, — If you indulge in Apple-Pie on 

 Thanksgiving, will you not have to gnash your teeth at Christ- 

 mas ? And leaving out of consideration that the silver which 

 jingled so melodiously in your pockets, last Autumn, when you 

 could find yet one more barrel of Baldwins for successive cus- 

 tomers, might as well not be coined for all the good it can do 

 those whose sole harvest has been foliage and caterpillars. It so 

 happens that the Orchards of England, — our best customer, — 

 have borne profusely, the current year. But there was never 

 a time, within the memory of living man, that the Apples of 

 Worcester County, preeminently among others, did not, from 

 superior beauty and flavor, command their own market at Co- 

 vent Garden, despite competition. Even now, in raid-October, 



