ESSEX AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 23 



of Essex may yet be as widely celebrated as the oranges 

 of Havana. Great credit is due to our Manning and Ives 

 for their indefatigable zeal and judicious skill in stocking 

 their gardens with such choice descriptions of cherries, 

 plums, peaches and pears. Thanks, too, should be 

 awarded them and other gentlemen in Salem and its 

 vicinity for the excellent Horticultural Society, which 

 they have so successfully established." 



Robert Manning of Salem, "the great pomologist of 

 America," had gathered into his own collection nearly 

 2,000 varieties of fruit. From that collection, 240 varie- 

 ties of the pear were shown at an exhibition of the Massa- 

 chusetts Horticultural Society. The Essex County Nat- 

 ural History Society invited displays of fruit in its weekly 

 exhibitions from Spring to Autumn. John M. Ives of 

 Salem, one of the most skilled pomologists of his time, in 

 his enlarged edition of Manning's New England Fruit 

 Book, recommended the finest varieties of pears and ap- 

 ples in 1842. His essay on The Apple, in the Transactions 

 of 1847, was a valuable contribution to the literature of 

 the orchard. He was a constant exhibitor at the Cattle 

 Shows. 



Renewed attention to Forestry was also apparent. Al- 

 lusion has been made to the State grant in 1819 to pro- 

 mote the raising of ship timber. Dr. Andrew Nichols 

 had urged the cultivation of the locust in the bare and 

 rocky pastures. But the offer of premiums had elicited 

 no response. At the Lynn meeting in 1847, Richard S. 

 Fay of Lynn made an offer of a hundred dollars for the 

 best acre of white, black or yellow oak, planted from the 

 acorn, that should be entered in 1852. In the same year, 

 Rev. Gardner B. Perry of Bradford, one of the wisest and 

 strongest members of the Society, contributed an essay 

 on The Cultivation of the Oak. Mr. Fay, as chairman 

 of the Committee on Forest Trees, made a report of great 

 value, regarding the profit of tree culture, in 1848, and 

 appealed to the farmers to plant. 



