24 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1848, 



teach them to cuhivate the productions of Nature, and we hope the time will 

 come when every wayside cottage will have its flower border and its rose trees. 

 Respectfully submitted, for the Committee. 

 Oct. 7, 1848. 



[No signature, nor any clew to the authorship of this Report. — Sec] 



REPORT ON FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. 



In presenting this Report to the public we feel that we ought to apologize 

 for its many deficiencies. . Having been busily engaged as a member of the 

 Committee of Arrangements during the entire week of the Exhibition, and 

 reluctantly consenting to prepare the Report only when it was found that no 

 other person could be prevailed upon to undertake the task, it is not so much 

 a matter of regret that our opportunities for examining the Fruits were quite 

 limited, as that we possess yet more limited abilities to improve better oppor- 

 tunities had they been afforded. Nevertheless, we can mingle a drop of 

 consolation with this apology, by promising that for no consideration whatever 

 will we allow ourselves to be drawn into the commission of the like manner of 

 sin again. 



Of the Exhibition in general, we do not hesitate to say that it was eminently 

 successful. The chaste and beautiful decorations of the Hall, the unexpected 

 richness of the Floral display, the immense quantities, consisting of more than 

 a thousand plates and baskets, of fine Fruits arranged upon the tables, were 

 the admiration and wonder of all who witnessed them. Competent judges 

 amono- the numerous strangers who were present, expressed thjeir opinions very 

 decidedly, that the varieties of valuable Apples exhibited surpassed in number 

 and beauty any show of the kind ever before seen in the United States. The 

 Pears also were in some varieties very fine, and all of them better than an 

 unpropitious season had led us to anticipate. Beautiful Peaches also were 

 there, and Plums and Grapes, which a long drought had been unable to shrivel, 

 and myriads of ravaging insects had not found time to destroy. And it was 

 exceedingly gratifying to perceive iu the improvements which our citizens are 

 making in horticultural knowledge, an evidence that the instruction afforded 

 by these Exhibitions has not been lost. The new and better Fruits were more 

 numerously exhibited, fewer erroneous names were applied to those which have 

 been long cultivated, and the silly use of local and fancy names was less frequent 

 than formerly. 



The show of Vegetables was also unusually fine. Cabbages, mighty ones of 

 the earth, presented themselves before the Committee. Monstrous Beets 

 stretched their unwieldy forms upon the tables, bafHed like Columbus in their 

 attempted shorter passage to India. Carrrots, that had been growing with all 

 their might in a vain effort to beat the Beets, reposed among Sunflowers broad 



