6 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1866. 



The examination and comparison of the several lists of fruit, contributed at 

 our different annual exhibitions, from the earliest days of our history to the 

 present time, would prove a curious, and not altogether profitless, study. It 

 would disclose to us many facts which, if we ever knew, we shall find we have 

 entirely forgotten. It would show us that of the names contained in the meagre 

 catalogue of pears, for instance, in our earlier years, a great proportion have 

 become quite obsolete — have been dropped out of sight altogether — and the 

 fruit which they represented, once enjoying an enviable reputation, for excel- 

 lence, has been discarded as unworthy of cultivation, and comparatively 

 worthless, and its place supplied by varieties of more excellent quality. In 

 those times, too, the general contributor was seldom or never without his offer- 

 ing of peaches and plums — fruits now rarely seen upon our tables. A dozen 

 years since, it was by no means an uncommon thing for cultivators to exhibit 

 from five to ten varieties of the peach, and in some instances, as many as thirty 

 or more — many of them rivalling, and even excelling, in size and excellence, 

 the finest fruit of that kind which we now receive from other markets. The 

 same thing, to a considerable degree, might be said of the plum. Now, when 

 any of these fruits are placed upon our tables, we look at the contributor in 

 amazement at his development of skill manifested in their growth and production. 



Now all these things should teach the Horticulturist a lesson — which is, that 

 his work is never finished — that however excellent the fruit may be which he 

 produces this year, and to whatever degree of success he may consider he has 

 carried the cultivation of it, there are higher degrees of excellence to be 

 attained, and more choice varieties yet to be discovered and propagated, by 

 patient and plodding toil and experiment. Another lesson is taught him, and 

 that is, never to despair in his attempts to cultivate the more coy and delicate 

 varieties of fruit — that though the peach and the plum may fail for a year, or a 

 series of years, even ; still, careful and pains-taking cultivation and persistent 

 effort will at length be rewarded by an abundant harvest of those kinds of fruit 

 which many had given up as being beyond their power and skill to produce. 



The weekly exhibitions have been kept up through the year ; with what 

 success and with how much interest, on the part of members of the Society, the 

 weekly publication of contributions from the accurate pen of your Secretary 

 will sufficiently attest. The influence which these weekly meetings have, in 

 connection with the increasing use of your excellent library, is being every year 

 more sensibly felt. Formerly, the amateur cultivator had it all his own way. 

 Now he finds rivals springing up on every side, and the contest for the premiums 

 of the Society is quite as often decided against him as otherwise. In all this, the 

 community is the gainer, and the work thus commenced will eventually prove of 

 incalculable benefit to all classes ; and the amateur cultivator will feel rewarded 

 that so great a good has resulted from his example. 



The circle of this influence is plainly extending ; it is demonstrating to some 

 of us here, that have been slow to realize it, and more in the other towns, who 

 could not be convinced of it, that our Society is really what its name imports — 

 a County Institution. Sometimes, heretofore, it has been almost painful to 



