1882.] TRANSACTIONS. 25 



His annual harvest has been garnered. It comprehends the 

 loss of jonr best and wisest. Shall their places remain for ever 

 vacant 'i The response must come from this audience, and more 

 especially from the community at large. Our ranks have been 

 depleted rapidly during the later years ; and, if we would not 

 allow this time-honored and almost historic Society to sink into 

 senility and decrepitude, the ambition of youth must be 

 awakened ; — manhood and womanhood alike being challenged to 

 an unselfish enmlation. Men placed themselves in training for 

 years, in ancient times and in lieathen countries, to obtain a 

 wreath of laurel or a crown of parsley. The victor was hailed 

 with enthusiasm, and all joined in according the due meed of 

 praise to iiis pre-eminence. Has human nature degenerated ; or 

 is Christianity gone to seed ; in this Nineteenth Century ? 

 " Tempora nnitantur:" shall the rest of the proverb justify 

 itself ! Hitherto an Apple has been called — MaiclerCs Blush. 

 Shall a future Committee on Nomenclature be constrained to 

 review that appellation and, selecting one more pertinent and 

 adhesive, decide that, after all, it was but a synonym for the old 

 Female Clieek ! 



Among our other misfortunes, this season, we have been 

 largely exempt from the plague- of Blight. In an admitted 

 deficiency of crop, it was something not to lose the very Orchard. 

 The cause, or nature, of Blight, as generally recognized, still 

 continues a profound mystery. There are theorists, in plenty ; 

 just as you might have found a score eager and quick to explain 

 why cylinder-heads blew off; or the walking-beam came to an 

 equipoise; during late '* Republican " caucuses ! 



Nothing more definite is known concerning it than in the time 

 of Dr. Lindley, whose character was once summed up thus 

 tersely : — " No one ever united exacter knowledge with better 

 power of conveying it in simple, lucid English." And that 

 patriarch of modern scientific and practical Horticulture, among 

 English-speaking races, openly confessed his ignorance: — 



"Blight? A bliglit is a sun-stroke, or a frost-bite; a plague of 

 insects, or of fungi; a paralysis of the roots, a gust of bad air: it is 

 wetness, it is dryness ; it is heat, it is cold ; it, is plethora, it is starva- 

 tion ; in shoit, it is any thing that disfigures or destroys foliage." 



