360 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



In 1822 Hon. John Lowell wrote that " We are utterly desti- 

 tute in New England of nurseries for fruit trees on an extensive 

 scale ; we have no cultivators on whom we can call for a supply 

 of the most common plants of the smaller fruits, such as straw- 

 berries, gooseberries, and raspberries of the superior kinds. We 

 have no place to which we can go for plants to ornament our 

 grounds. We have not a single seedsman who can furnish us 

 with fresh annual seeds on which we can depend and place a reli- 

 ance." He added : " Shall it be said that from June to September, 

 in our scorching summers, a traveller may traverse Massachusetts 

 from Boston to Albany, and not be able to procure a plate of fruit 

 except wild strawberries, blackberries, and huckleberries, unless 

 from the hospitality of some private gentleman." 



In accomplishing the wondrous change wrought in the sixty 

 years and more since that time ; in the increase and the perfection 

 of fruits and flowers, no factor so potent as the Massachusetts 

 Horticultural Society has existed and acted. The Massachusetts 

 Society for Promoting Agriculture, having as its founders and first 

 members several of the most prominent and far-seeing men, and 

 some among them the most wealthy, in the Commonwealth, was 

 incorporated in 1792, and by its corporate action, the efforts of its 

 individual members, and by the publication of the " Massachusetts 

 Agricultural Repository," which from the first contained articles 

 devoted to Horticulture, accomplished a vast deal in shaping sen- 

 timent, and preparing the way for the formation and incorporation 

 of the Horticultural Society. 



A few books and journals on horticulture had been published ; 

 horticultural societies had been incorporated in New York and in 

 Philadelphia. Kenrick, Winship, and Manning — honored names — 

 had established in or near Boston, nurseries which became quite 

 extensive ; the time had come, and prominent men in Boston inter- 

 ested in the subject, for general good, determined on some definite 

 action, and their ideas finally crystallized and took form by the 

 incorporation in 1821), of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society 

 " for the purpose of encouraging and improving the science and 

 practice of horticulture, and promoting the amelioration of the 

 various species of trees, plants, and vegetables, and the introduc- 

 tion of new species and varieties," and with the right to purchase 

 and hold I'eal estate. 



For several years preceding this, the unwisdom of interring the 



