10 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



silver vases for prizes for roses, at the Rose Exhibition in June 

 last. The motion was referred to the Executive Committee. 



Adjourned to Saturday, January 10. 



MEETING FOR DISCUSSION. 



The Climate and Horticulture of New England. 



By John E. Russell, Leicester. 



Mr. President, Gentlemen and Ladies: — 



This sharp January day, with hard, deep-frozen ground and 

 threats of lower temperature, is not unseasonable in our climate, 

 nor does it interfere with the work of the members of our Society. 

 It allows time for the winter meetings ; and I thank you for 

 honoring me with an invitation to address this the initial gathering 

 of the 3'ear. Let me, sir, congratulate the Societ}' upon the good 

 work of the last year. I rejoice to know that our membership is 

 enlarged, our influence spreading, our exhibitions so zealously 

 maintained and so well attended, and our treasury' in such a satis- 

 factory condition. 



At this opening meeting, a few remarks upon the climate of our 

 region and the history of our horticulture may not be out of place. 



To the horticulturist climate is a topic of ever-present interest. 

 Like our English cousins we are alwaj's growling about it, and 

 whenever at loss for conversation we " resume the weather." I 

 have often thought, in the midst of one of our terrible winters 

 which so try the courage and irritate the nerves, that our hard New 

 England was too inhospitable to be the- habitation of man. At this 

 gloomy period I have j-earned, as those who wait for the morning, 

 for the miracles of spring, so vivid upon these Northern shores, 

 and for the beauties of June, the crown and glory of the New Eng- 

 land year. 



In my wide experience, whether under the rosy light reflected hy 

 the tideless Mediterranean, or where the great swell of the Pacific 

 breaks upon shores whose verdure never fails, and tropic islands 

 the glorj' of whose fronded palms delights the voyager from afar, 

 I have experienced no such sensation of joj' as comes with our 

 delicious June. It is a new heaven and a new earth, making good 

 to us the doctrine of compensation, and purging our minds of all 

 unhappy recollections of winter. But it is so short ! 



It was in the early summer of their first experience that Edward 



