TRANSACTIONS, <fec. U 



having had the good sense to enter their unknown varieties as natneUss. 

 This being as it should be, we hope so good an example will be follow- 

 ed by all those who maj hereafter exhibit fruits upon the Society's 

 tables, thereby relieving both Committees and visitors from much 

 perplexity, and the reputation of the Society from the sneers of 

 strangers. 



This pestilent custom of naming according to fancy, whatever 

 fruit may happen to be unknown, is full of mischief, being calculat- 

 ed only to subvert every thing like scientific precision of classifica- 

 tion or nomenclature. Many old fruits have thus been repeatedly re- 

 named, while, at the same time, new but undeserving fruits have 

 been thrust forward into a notice to which they were not at all 

 entitled. Whenever a new fruit is brought forward, of sufiicient 

 excellence to be worthy of cultivation, the Frmit Committee of some 

 Horticultural Society, or the editor of a horticultural journal, or 

 some other person, competent to do it properly, should publish, in a 

 respectable horticultural magazine or newspaper, a. description of 

 the fruit and its history, so far as known, designating it by such an 

 appropriate name as may be agreeable to the wishes of its origina- 

 tor. In all other cases it is better not to represent as something 

 known that which, in reality, is totally and perhaps deservedly 

 unknown. 



Indeed, we would rather that every fruit in the Hall should be 

 entered as nameless, than that such names as Hog-pen Apple, Big 

 GaVs Apple, Knoio- Nothing, Abigail's fancy. Back-door Seedling^ 

 Limber-twig Spice, &c. &c., should continue to provoke the criti- 

 cism of intelligent pomologists. 



After a long and patient examination of nearly a thousand plates 

 of apples, contributed by over a hundred difierent competitors,* and 

 after many perplexing comparisons, the Committee, with tolerable 

 unanimity, agreed to recommend that the Society's prizes for Apples 

 should be awarded as in the following table : 



Large Collections. 

 For the largest and best collection, the first premium to Job C. Stone, 



of Shrewsbury, - - - - - - - - -$6 00 



For the next, to Samuel H. Colton, of Worcester, - - - 5 oc 



*The exact uumber of plates of Apples upon the tables is belieyed to have been nine hundred 

 ^ni sixty, and of contributors, one hundred and seven. 



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