44 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1892. 



enthusiasm, but it was zeal without knowledge. It was like the 

 earliest attempts of the Sandwich Islanders to wear the garments 

 of civilization. The grotesque was in the ascendant. System, 

 order, symmetry, appliances, and a proper nomenclature were all 

 wanting. Each happy proprietor of a button pear or seedling 

 apple gathered them for the occasion, the windfalls with the rest. 

 These apples and pears were piled in pyramidal form upon circu- 

 lar plates, each plate indefinite as to the number it contained and 

 presumably " deaconed." If the lower stratum of each did not 

 hide from view one or more moth-stung specimens, it was the ex- 

 ception and not the rule. And each variety was named as suited 

 the fancy of the individual contributor. There was the Hog-Fen 

 apple, the Minister apple, the Big-Gal apple, the Praiseworthy, 

 the White Sheep Nose, the Razzlenose, the Nuzzlenose, the Pig- 

 nose, the Know-Nothing, the Abigail's Fancy, the Back-Door 

 Seedling, the Limber-Twig Spice, the Crow's Egg, the Stonewall 

 apple, the Cat-Head Sweeting. The same variety was often 

 entered by several individuals under as many difterent names. 



John Milton Earle, Chairman on Fruits, says, in 1843: "The 

 correcting of the Nomenclature of Pomology must be an im- 

 portant object in the operations of the Society. It is no uncom- 

 mon thing to find the same fruits under some half a dozen differ- 

 ent names, and sometimes several different fruits under the same 

 name." A committee on nomenclature, self -constituted or other- 

 . wise, soon went to work, brought order out of chaos, and rescued 

 many valuable fruits from the oblivion into which they might 

 have fallen by reason of their uncouth christening. One of its 

 notable feats was to divest the Hog-Pen apple of its unsavory 

 appellation and re-baptize it as the Holden Pippin, under which 

 name and later under the name of the Holden it has held a front 

 rank for these many years as a valuable fruit upon the Society's 

 premium list, it having been placed among the best ten Autumn 

 apples recommended by the Society for general cultivation. The 

 evolution of the Pear and of Pear culture, so far as the City and 

 County of Worcester is concerned, may be said to date from our 

 first organization. 



In 1863, the President of the Society, George Jaques, con- 

 trasting its then condition with its first beginning, speaks of the 



