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WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



[1870. 



From that drought there was, for Raspberries, no escape. In the very height 

 of the season, when neither rain nor dew descended upon shrivelling berry and 

 parching leaf, there fell upon the growers of this fruit a ukase, from the City 

 Hall, more withering in its effects than the fabled simoom of the Sahara. Cul- 

 tivators, whose water supply was cut off, had, however, the consolation of per- 

 ceiving that this municipal discrimination against themselves enured to the 

 benefit of the jockey and ostler, — " lewd fellows of the baser sort,'' intent 

 solely upon bespattering other felloes, less wooden and dirty than themselves. 



It was with feelings akin to those of the cartman, whose vocabulary was too 

 inadequate for suitable expression, as he surveyed his load bestrewn upon the 

 long and difficult acclivity so painfully surmounted, that your Secretary watched 

 some seedling plants of his own successively dry up and perish. In his annual 

 report for 18(J9, he gave a detailed statement of the yield of the different varie- 

 ties cultivated by himself. As that statement, republished and circulated in 

 the Transactions of the Society, has attracted some attention, it is repeated here 

 in order that it may be contrasted with the widely differing results of the cur- 

 rent year : 



The new plantation of Northumberland Fillbasket and the greater development 

 of the stools of Knevett's Giant, scarcely compensate for the elimination from 

 the table of the Philadelphia. The Franconia, which comes latest into bearing, 

 was hardly worth picking, and certainly did not repay the labor and manure 

 expended upon its cultivation. And yet it is unquestionably one of the very 

 best varieties that can be grown, upon a very heavy soil, in a season at all 

 propitious. Brinckle's Orange, although affording a diminished product, 

 nevertheless maintained in every respect its usual relative pre-eminence. Our 

 distinguished associate, Charles Downing, in a note to your Secretary, unduly 

 eulogistic of these reports, states that hi.s "experience with Brinckle's Orange 

 raspberry is the same as yours (the Secretary's). It is the most productive and 

 highest flavored of any, but too soft for market purposes." And in the past 

 unpropitious season, despite the drought, this variety continued in bearing 

 from July 9th to August 1 1th, a term of five fruitful weeks. 



