152 MASSACHUSETTS IIOKTTCULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Voted, That the thanks of the Societj' be presented to Mr. 

 HunncwcU for his liberal offer, and that a committee of six be 

 appointed by the chair, with full powers to make all necessary 

 arrangements. . 



The chair appointed 



H. HoLLis Hdnnewell, * 



Henry Winthrop Sargent, 



Francis Parkman, 



Edward S. Rand, Jr., 



Charles S. Sargent, 



William Gray, Jr. 



On motion, the President of the Society was added to the com- 

 mittee. 



The exhibition, as above proposed, was carried out in a manner 

 never before attempted in this country, being opened on the 6th of 

 June, in a tent about three hundred feet long by about eighty feet 

 ■wide. It was arranged on the plan of similar exhibitions in Eng- 

 land, where the cultivation and exhibition of this class of plants has 

 been carried to the greatest perfection, the plants, instead of being 

 placed on stands in tubs or pots, being sunk or planted in beds of 

 turf, as if growing naturally' in the ground, the whole interior of the 

 tent thus presenting the appearance of a garden. From the entrance 

 at the e'astern end a broad, central, gravelled walk, bordered by a 

 wide strip of grass, brouglit the visitor opposite a mass of rhodo- 

 dendrons, more than forty feet in diameter, forming the central 

 feature of the exhibition. Here the path divided, passing around 

 near the margin of the tent, but with still a border of turf between 

 it and the canvas, the two branches uniting at the farther end of 

 the tent, and enclosing three irregularly-shaped beds, the first con- 

 taining the mass of rhododendrons already mentioned, and the 

 second a similar mass, the third (that nearest the end of the 

 tent) being filled with groups and fine single specimens, at sueh 

 distances as to display their full beauty, while in the border were 

 also planted single specimens of fine new varieties, many of them 

 in standard form, as well as kalmias and hardy azaleas. The bor- 

 der on either side of the broad main walk was planted with tree 

 and other rare ferns, palms, Indian azaleas, a tine Muf-a ensete^ 

 and other tioi)ical phmts from the greenhouses of Messrs. S. R. 

 Paysou, C. S. Saigent, William Gray, Jr., H. F. Durant, and the 

 Bussey Institute. A fine specimen of ^eafoH/iia, twenty feet high, 



