8 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1893. 



the period when the young fruit was assuming form and sub- 

 stance; that and other adverse influences culminating in a tropi- 

 cal hurricane which stripped where it did not uproot the tree ; 

 and sapping faith in the assurance of seed-time and harvest, 

 while ruthlessly annulling the labor of an entire season. 



Since the above was written, I have received a copy of the 

 "Paper," full as an egg of meat, which our honored President 

 read before the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, on Febru- 

 ary 4th, ulto. Dilating upon " The Economics of Horticulture "; 

 its theories in speculative science and their beneficent application 

 in practice; contrasting, in terse narration, what has been done, 

 and is now doing, with a vision in perspective of what might be 

 achieved under propitious circumstances ; President Parker spake 

 thus pat and to the precise point of my contention : 



"And what forbids the Commonwealth, which from time im- 

 memorial has taken Agriculture under its protection, which has 

 drawn annually so many thousands of dollars from its treasury 

 for the destruction of insect pests, for sanitary purposes, for 

 experimentation in sewage disposal, for a thousand things from 

 which no return could ever be expected — what forbids the Com- 

 monwealth from lending to these Societies its fostering care, 

 when it can so easily be demonstrated that every dollar thus 

 spent will prove a paying investment ? " 



The display of Out-Door Grapes by the Agricultural College 

 of Massachusetts, on the 5th October, ulto, for which we were, 

 and shall continue, so much indebted to the zealous interest of 

 our veteran Judge of Fruits,^ sharply marked a stage in the 

 achievements of our local viticulture. Within the memory of the 

 writer, a few clusters of Isabella in a propitious season ; a few 

 bunches of Northern Muscadine, no matter wliat the season ; 

 were all that enabled indulgent parents to set the children's teeth 

 on edge. The introduction of the Concord, for which Horticul- 

 ture owes such an unpaid and, as it were churlishly acknowledged, 

 debt to Mr. Bull, defined the first real step towards actual im- 

 provement of the Grape in quality and hardiness. Since then 

 viticulture has progressed a pas de g^ant : the main difiiculty 

 being to impose a check upon that good nature which is too ready 



1 James Draper, Esq. See AiDpeucUx for list of the uiuetj'-two varieties, e. w. l. 



