REPORT OF THE DELEGATE TO THE AMERICAN 

 POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



The selection made by the American Pomological Society of a 

 place for its biennial session of 1885 was the occasion of much 

 surprise and comment. 



An eminent Englishman on his way to these shores for the 

 first time, after what seemed to him an interminable voyage, 

 gravely enquired of the steamer's captain, " Do you not think it 

 possible, Sir, that you have sailed ^a^^ America ?" When your 

 delegate was first commissioned to represent this Society at the 

 Convention at Grand Rapids, and had started to fulfil his mission, 

 his idea of the location, size and importance of that place was 

 quite as nebulous as the English Tourist's conception of the 

 geography of this country. Nor was this nebulous state of mind 

 unshared by other delegates. The sleeper attached to a lumber- 

 ing freight-train, and progressing at the rate of twelve miles an 

 hour, which drew us westward from Detroit, was full of malcon- 

 tents, demanding in terms more terse and vigorous than polite, 

 larded well with expletives withal, why the back-woods of Michi- 

 gan should have been selected as the assembling place of a 

 Society of national membership and national importance. 



But when we arrived at this seeming Ultima Thule all mis- 

 givings vanished — or were changed rather to astonishment and 

 delight. We found Grand Hapids a charming and thriving city 

 of fifty thousand inhabitants — with large first-class hotels, 

 churches and public buildings, rivalling in costliness and taste, 

 those of eastern cities, rejoicing even in what Worcester has 

 long sighed for in vain — a magnificent Government building. 

 A noticeable feature was the school-house of model architecture 



