75 



VEGETABLES. 



This Society made announcement for the Fair in Danvers in 

 1835, that " a convenient room will be furnished for the 

 Exhibition of Fruits and Flowers, and a committee will be 

 appointed to examine and report upon tlie same. All who are 

 interested in improving the Horticulture of our county, are 

 invited to lend their aid .to this part of the exhibition, which, 

 it is hoped, will be charming to the eye, and delicious to the 

 taste." 



The committee of that year reported that " there were 

 exhibited forty varieties of apples, twenty varieties of pears, 

 quinces, etc., a variety of grapes, native and foreign. Fine 

 specimens of the vegetable marrow squash, exhibited by 

 Benjamin Goodrich and others, of which they say, ' This 

 excellent squash ought to be generally known and cultivated 

 by farmers. Great care must be taken to prevent it from 

 mixing with other squashes and pumpkins, especially with 

 the blue African Squash, with which it is much disposed to 

 amalgamate, and lose, in great increase of size, its peculiarly 

 valuable qualities.' Some very large crookneck squashes, 

 pumpkins, the real citron melon, for preserving, exhibited by 

 S. Driver, and a variety of other vegetables by Edward Lan- 

 der and others. A great variety of beautiful flowers including 

 fifty specimens of Dahlias were exhibited." The whole 

 amount awarded for Fruits, Flowers and Vegetables was $13 

 in gratuities. 



Garden vegetables were so little thought of at that time 

 that the Society could not even add the name of Vegetables to 

 the title of the " Committee on Fruits and Flowers," in whose 

 charge they seemed to be then placed, which led subsequent 

 committees, we should judge, to not recognize them as belong- 

 ing to them. 



In 1836 the committee awarded $9.50 for fruits, flowers, 

 and vegetables, (vegetables receiving $5 of it), for sugar- 

 beets and onions, crookneck squashes, and onions, best autum- 

 nal marrow squashes, specimens of a large lot of African 



