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WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



[186.' 



A most marked diminution will be observed in the comparative aggregate 

 entries of the staple Fruits, such as Apples and Pears, during the past year 

 and its two predecessors. Yet there are many reasons that sufficiently explain 

 this, without our being constrained to impute it to any decrease of interest in 

 the welfare of the Society. Probably there has been no other season, within 

 the memory of the present generation, that, opening with such bright promise, 

 closed upon a more total blight of all pomological fruition. Here and there 

 were exceptions, it is true ; yet so few and partial as to render the general 

 failure but the more apparent. When Baldwin Apples, in the bearing year, 

 command from $3.00 to $4.00 per barrel, at the commencement of the market, 

 and $8.00 before the first of January, it requires no reference to the records of 

 your Secretary to prove their unwonted scarcity. Cold storms and winds 

 injured their early bloom ; an unprecedented drought restricted and shrivelled 

 their growth ; and an innumerable swarm of insects, more destructive than the 

 "Legion" that entered into the swine, pervaded nearly the entire crop, from 

 circumference to core. Scarcely any varieties were exempt ; and such as were, 

 only to a limited extent. The same causes affected Pears even more unfavor- 

 ablv, although the entries upon the books of the Secretary do not make the 

 deficiency so manifest from the fact that so large a proportion of the contrib- 

 utors to the weekly exhibitions, cultivating small gardens in the city of Wor- 

 cester, are restricted to the growth of the Pear by the limited area at their 

 command. A town lot can scarcely accommodate a full-grown Apple tree. 

 But notwithstanding the extent to which the Pear receives attention among us, 

 an attention developing in skill with each successive season, thanks to the 

 labors of this Society ! it is none the less true that the care and effort of the 

 most practiced were at fault during the past year. Handsome specimens of 

 favorite ^varieties lacked the most essential merit — flavor. Some of the earlier 

 kinds did well — forced forward, as it were, by the dry heat of their appropriate 

 season. Such, for example, were the Beurre Giffard and Bai'tlett. Later — the 

 Belle Lucrative yielded profusely, as, in fact, that excellent variety usually 

 does. But of the autumn and winter varieties, strictly so-called, it must be 

 admitted that the failure was as signal as general. The Louise Bonne, Beurre 

 Diel, Beurre d'Anjou, Duchesse and Marie Louise, not less than the Glout 

 Morceau and Winter Nelis, disappointed the sanguine anticipations to which • 

 their wealth of bloom in spring had given rise. The Doyenne du Comice upheld 

 its character for unsurpassed flavor, yet was but twice represented on your 



