80 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1895. 



Kalm dedicated to Dr. Gaulthier of Quebec a genus of plants which 

 embalms his memory, commonly called wiutergreen, or checkerberry, 

 or partridge-berry, or box-berry, but known to botanists as GauUheria 

 prociimbens, L. This, too, is a peculiarly American plant, and is 

 well known by its pleasant aromatic flavor, its shining evergreen 

 leaves, its delicate flowers, and its scarlet berries. It is very gen- 

 erally distributed throughout New England, where it can enjoy the 

 protection of evergreen as well as deciduous woods, and is about as 

 well known to young persons as any of our native plants, not except- 

 ing the trailing arbutus. This is, however, only one of eleven species 

 of low evergreens of this family which help to carpet the forest floor. 

 Besides it are the well-known trailing arbutus, the creeping snow- 

 berry, one of our rarest species, the bearberry, the two species of 

 chimaphila or pipsissewa, the four species of pyrola or wintergreen, 

 and the one Moneses or one-flowered pyrola, one of the daintiest of 

 its tribe. 



A springtime would hardly seem like itself if we did not see in the 

 early days the fair, white racemes of the leather-leaf, Cassandra 

 calyculata, Don, mingling with the purple blossoms of Rhodora ; or 

 if, in the latter days of the spring, we did not see the fragrant and 

 charming LeucotJioe near by the pink azalea. Rhododendron nudi- 

 florum, Torr. The expansive beauty of the Rhododendron maximum 

 is meet for the tropic splendors of late June or early July. 



We are proud of our representatives of this great order. This 

 pride does not prevent us from appreciating the beauty of the heath 

 or heather of Great Britain when it empurples the hills and the 

 moorlands. 



Should it be our fortune ever to visit the Cape of Good Hope and 

 see its hundreds of forms belonging to this great family, we should 

 appreciate them the more from their kinship with our forms. The 

 exotics shall be partners with the natives in the great enterprise of 

 making the world better and brighter, of filling it with sweetness and 

 light. They should not be rivals. There is no need or place for 

 such rivalry. The world is wide enough for both, and better because 

 both are in it. May they both flourish ! 



In the early spring, while the hordes of insects are not yet astir, 

 but while the winds are never sleeping in their efforts to restore the 

 equilibrium of the atmosphere disturbed by the northward progress of 

 the sun, the wind-fertilized or anemophilous Mowers open. The nu- 

 merous catkins of the alders, hazels, birches, oaks, walnuts, butter- 

 nut, beech, sweet-fern, sweet-gale, bayberry, hornbeam and hop- 



