PREFACE. 



At the Annual Meeting of the Worcester County Horticultural Society, 

 holdeu on the first Wednesday of November, A. D. 1865, on motion of 

 Hon. Francis H. Dewey, it was unanimously voted : — That the Transac- 

 tions of the Society for the year 1865, be published under the supervision 

 of the Standing Committee on Publication : and that all matters of interest 

 or value, hitherto inedited, from 1847, to 1851, inclusive, be comprised in 

 said issue, thus authorized. 



The duty of complying with the instructions of the Society was assigned by 

 the Committee on Publication, to the Secretary, one of its members. The 

 labor of executing that task has been materially facilitated by the cordial and 

 zealous co-operation of Master Henry E. Hill, to whom acknowledgement is 

 justly and publicly rendered. The columns of contemporary journals sup- 

 plied the only record or trace of the proceedings of past years that could be 

 discovered. All these being, in many instances, elaborate and lengthy re- 

 ports, had to be transcribed to be of possible use. That they were preserved 

 at all is another among the numerous obligations which the Society owes to 

 Hon. John Milton Earle. The courtesy of the proprietors of the Spy, (in its 

 first volume called Transcript,) as also of Mr. Wall, of the later Transcript, in 

 according the protracted use of their files, is sensibly appreciated. 



This publication completes the series of printed " Transactions" of the So- 

 ciety to the date of its issue. Had there been no intermission in the regular 

 sequence, it would have been greatly to the credit and yet more to the pecu- 

 niary advantage of the Society. Experience so costly, is apt to prove of 

 enduring benefit. 



Horticultural Hall, June, 1866. 



Erratum :— In the Preface to the last vohime of Transactions, in the first lino of 

 the last paragraph, for "Society" read "Secretary." 



