16 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Mr. Hovey said he was glad to hear from Messrs. Gray and 

 Rand. The prize for Indian Azaleas, six specimens, is twenty- 

 five dollars, and it would require twenty-five years to get them up 

 to the size expected. They must each have fifty square feet of 

 space in a house with a cool temperature, and then be removed to 

 a warm house to bloom, and the plants are ruined after having 

 been brought to exhibition, for that year. Messrs. Veitch & Co., 

 the English nurserymen, have a gardener who gives his whole time 

 to the preparation of such plants, and often to the exhibition of 

 plants at several shows. 



C. M. Atkinson said that he looked with peculiar pride on the 

 medals which he had gained. He thought there should be a pro- 

 portion between the amount of a prize and the object for which it 

 is awarded, and spoke of the difi"erence between the care and labor 

 required to grow Phloxes or a mammoth squash, and Mr, Sargent's 

 Azaleas. He also criticised the award of a silver medal for a 

 garden plan, and said that prizes were not oflfered at proper 

 seasons, and that there was a want of discrimination between what 

 could be cut in the garden and plants requiring eighteen months to 

 grow. He w^ould have a gradation of medals, pomological and 

 floricultural silver and bronze medals. 



Marshall P. Wilder said that the object of the society is, first, to 

 create a love for fruits and flowers, and second, to present them for 

 exhibition. He thought it was no honor to win without competi- 

 tion, and compared the exhibition of to-day with those at the 

 commencement, as showing what had been effected by competition 

 for prizes. He believed that amateurs would make exhibitions 

 equal to those of England. In allusion to what had been said in 

 favor of omitting certain plants from the prize lists he remarked 

 that it would not do to drop any of these beautiful things, and that 

 he had begun again to raise seedling camellias and azaleas, and to 

 import new gesneras, gloxinias, and plectopomas. Growing ericas 

 and geraniums is so expensive that few persons will appropriate 

 the money for them. He thought the premiums for collections 

 should be raised. 



Mr. Gray thought that the prizes for collections of plants had 

 induced sufficient competition. 



Elisha Tower said he loved the generous feeling that brought 

 plants here, and he did not believe the growers cultivated them for 

 the money prizes they bring. He would reduce the prizes for 



