26 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1894. 



a " crank," but the uninitiated world doesn't know what it is that so 

 absorbs him, he has a little heaven of his own. Mr. Eckford is an 

 old Scotchman, but I think he must have the instincts of the special- 

 ist in him. I am told that about all any one can get out of him is, 

 that he will take one of his novelties in his fingers and hold it off like 

 a connisseur and say, "That's a grand flower." He wrote me that 

 he worked seven years on the Sweet Pea before he got any result. It 

 is one of the most difficult flowers we have for hybridizing, and it is 

 no mean monument for a man to produce one new variety that is dis- 

 tinct enough to deserve a name. 



Now, I did not finish about the specialist's work. Besides his 

 correspondence and his contributions to floral literature, aud practical 

 work at being his own grower, and his skilled work at improving and 

 adding to the varieties, besides all this, there comes in the annual 

 exhibition work, and when one has got a creditable exhibit ready for 

 Boston so as to get it there at 10 A. M., and repeated that experience 

 for other cities day after day, as we ought to do in this countr3\ 

 whatever way he may get his pay back, it is one of the conditions of 

 being a specialist. And then, lest the whole thing come to naught, 

 his work has got to issue in some sort of seed business, the easiest 

 way to do which is probably to gratify the big seed-houses in their 

 incessant demand for novelties, and they are only too glad to have 

 specialists help them out. But it doesn't end so easily as that, for 

 any one who is a successful specialist must pay the price of being 

 importuned for a thousand favors in the Avay of special seed, special 

 advice, and special interest in every one who writes, even though they 

 forget to enclose a stamp. Well, now, I said I wanted to plead for 

 the muUiplication of specialists, but I fear 1 have beaten a regular 

 '"tom-tom" to scare them away. This remains true, that the field 

 opens very wide in this country for specialists. The man who has 

 courage to be one, ought also to resolve to be an absolutely unselfish 

 one, for he has got to do a brave aud impartial work in reducing all 

 synonyms to rightful names, in overriding all the selfish schemes of 

 seed-houses to advertise themselves, in frowning upon all premature 

 claims to novelties, and in so respecting the flower upon which he is 

 at work, and the great floral public, that he will tolerate neither in 

 himself nor others anything but honest aud meritorious work. 



The time is now ripe for a generation of floral workers who are 

 neither amateur amusers of themselves, nor florists governed by a 

 fickle public, but men to set the standard and lay a scientific founda- 

 tion for the great future before us. I cannot blame our seedsmen 



