72 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1873. 



And your Petitioners would further say that they are not especially so- 

 licitous for what is entitled a " Hearing " before a Committee of your 

 Honorable Bodies, at which their arra}^ of indisputable facts would prob- 

 ably be met, and possibh' overwhelmed, by the gushing sap of sentimental 

 females, or the lluent gibberish of urban ornithologists, utterly uncon- 

 scious of the obvious distinction between the Turdus Miyratorius and 

 any other 2\crdus. 



And your Petitioners, earnestly desiring that the truth maybe elicited, 

 from exact observation and precise test, and not bj' accepting for gospel 

 the mawkish theories of moulting sciolists, would further pray your Hon- 

 orable Bodies to authorize the determination, by a Commission of com- 

 petent and faithful men, of the actual facts in the premises, to-wit: If 

 Birds, or many species of them, aie not signally rapacious of Fruit, Veg- 

 etables, &c.; whether the3M'ender any appreciable compensation for the 

 damage they do, b}' the "destruction of noxious insects; but more especiall}^ 

 (and upon this your Petitioners would lay exceeding emphasis,) should 

 it be found that they do consume Insects, whether those Insects are not 

 Parasites, — allies and friends of Man, — never his foes? 



So shall the " Science and Practice of Horticulture " be at last effect- 

 ually advanced and improved, and the development of Borrioboola Gha be 

 no longer arrested by the diversion of those insipid streams of sentiment- 

 ality upon which her waste places have been wont to depend for irriga- 

 tion. For, and in behalf of, the Trustees, 



Edward Winslow Lijstcoln, 

 Secretary of the Trustees and of the Corporation. 



The language of the Petition varying scarcely a particle from the terms 

 of that which was received without a murmur at the Session of 1872, 

 your Secretary was puzzled at the time, and is still at a loss, to account 

 for the virtuous indignation of the Senatorial Ebeuezer. It has been 

 suggested that his ideas had got somewhat mixed in the effort to recon- 

 cile the toleration of Cider with the pressing exigencies of Party. Some 

 have imagined that his thin skin was nettled at the explicit impeachment 

 of his veracity by an associate fi"om Essex. Other some opine that he 

 may have lost his head through pride of success in demonstrating the 

 disloyaltj'^ of Charles Sumner. But an ex-President of our Society, whose 

 perceptions are as acute as his wit is pungent, finds a solution of the 

 enigma not less plausible than grotesque. In his judgment the origin of 

 misconception is to be sought in Latin cacophony; and in the private 

 grief of the Turdus Felivox from Fitchburg, at any hint, however deli- 

 cately conveyed, that the difterence between his own peculiar species and 

 that of his congener, — the Migratorius, — would not be perceptible to 

 the average Legislative intellect. 



Recommending that you renew your Petition to the General Court for 

 relief in the premises, whereof the need was never more evident nor 

 urgent than during the past year, praying for such amendment of exist- 

 ing Statutes as shall concede to freeholders the liberty of protecting 



