100 MASSACHUSETTS IIOllTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The committee regretted to notice, at several of the exhibitions 

 in August, pears so immature, and indeed ungrown, that they 

 would have felt obliged, under the fourteenth rule, to exclude them 

 from exhibition ; but the}' were spared this duty by the exhil)itors, 

 who, at the suggestion of the committee, cheerfully removed them 

 from the tables. We trust that hereafter exhibitors will be better 

 informed as to the proper time for showing their pears ; and to aid 

 them we will sa}' that the half-grown Flemish Beauties, shown on 

 the 16th of August, should have remained on the tree a month 

 longer, and the Louise Bonne of Jersey, Sheldon, Belle Lucrative, 

 de Tongres, Seckel, Flemish Beauty, Howell, etc., shown on the 

 23d and 30th, were almost as much out of season. 



We cannot refrain from saying that we believe the bountiful crop 

 of pears has inured too little to the benefit of the producers and 

 consumers, and too much to that of the middle-men, who stand 

 between them. When the dealer makes a profit of from one hun- 

 dred lo four hundred per cent, either the consumer pa3's altogether 

 too much, or else the division of what he pnj'^s between the producer 

 and the dealer is extremely unjust. On this point we might repeat, 

 almost word for word, what was said in the report of the Fruit 

 Committee for 1869 on the price of grapes, to which we would 

 call the attention of all interested. The language there used might 

 be made stronger with reference to the market for pears this year. 



GuAPES. — The early exhibitions of native grapes, though not so 

 good as in some seasons, were perhaps fully up to the average. The 

 collection exhibited by Horace Katon at the annual exhilVition, and 

 which took the lirst prize, was of remaikable excellence, the Allen's 

 Hybrids, lonas, Crevellings, and others being so superior to any- 

 thing ever before seen in open culture as to excite a suspicion 

 that they might have been from girdled vines. Mr. Eaton, how- 

 ever, assures us that such was not the case, and that only legiti- 

 mate means were employed in producing them. His soil is rather 

 heavy, and not iialurall}' ada[)tcd to the grape, but has been thor- 

 oughly drained, and the vines have been protected during the 

 winter. 



The large collection of seedling grapes exhibited by James H. 

 Ixicketts, of Newburg, N. Y., at the meeting of the American 

 Tomological Society, remained during our own exhibition, and 

 most of the kinds were tested by the committee. The Secretary 

 was thought to be not quite as good as last year, but this may have 



