6 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1884- 



make faces at eacli other ! one disputing because the other 

 affirms, — and for no better reason ! 



" But yet the pity of it, lago ! O, lago, the pity of it, lago !" 



This Society was incorporated, March 3d, A. D., 1842. But a 

 few years must elapse ere those of you who survive will be called 

 upon to take worthy note of your Fiftieth Anniversary. Will 

 not a suitable commemoration require ? should it not command 

 the heartiest co-operation of our entire Membership ? regardless 

 of whether this premium might have been otherwise awarded, — 

 that gratuity wholly withheld ! In a voluntary association such 

 as this, — with no other attraction than mutuality of taste ; with- 

 out stronger bond of union than the mere accord of opinion ; 

 how infinitely truer is it than of yore, that " a house divided 

 against itself shall not stand !" 



" Why are these things thus ?" sorrowfully exclaimed the great 

 American Patriot, as he sacrificed the last of his wife's rela- 

 tions, — her pet lamb, as it were, — upon the altar of an interne- 

 cine Moloch. Similar, if but in unequal measure, is the despair- 

 ing cry from the great army of Pomologists who experience 

 failures for which no theory will satisfactorily account. Says a 

 writer from Vineland, — 



" After one of the severest drouths ever known here there came a 

 season of too much rain, setting in towards the end of July and con- 

 tinuing for several weeks. It was too late to do the waning crops of 

 Blackberries nuich good, but it helped sweet Potatoes, started weeds 

 as if by magic, and also started up the Grape-Rot, particularly on 



Concord vines. 



* * •* 



That the old favorite, the Concord, must go, admits of no dispute." 



If he has learned that the Concord must go, — even there 

 where the organic law of Prohibition appears to have no control 

 over, even if it has any recognized relation to, " auri sacra 

 fames ", — he has a lesson that should profit him much. Upon 

 its first introduction, good because there were none better ; com- 

 paratively worthless now that the laws of cultivation are growing 

 simpler, and the name of its superiors is legion ; what needs but to 

 dismiss it — without regret for its departure, with kindly recollec- 



