28 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1869. 



as surely as the abrasion of tbeir hides would bring to the surface the countless 

 ill-humors and sores of those forest out-laws. Yet it is consolatory to reflect 

 that such offences and outrages are perpetrated on Sunday, and that in the 

 intervals of their commission our Police are sedulously perfecting themselves 

 in the amusement and recreation of base-ball. 



Your serious thought is invoked, gentlemen, to the imperative need of exer- 

 cising more care in the formation of your committees. In no particular was 

 the precise judgment or the exact integrity of the lamented Ripley so marked as 

 in the pains which he lavished in this respect, whenever he was placed upon 

 your committee of nominations. When I look around upon these countenances 

 so familiar, and mark the gray hairs that even now herald the near future of 

 so many among us, the question arises of itself if the bull and stud horse can 

 alone attract the young; and if, with the departure of the present generation 

 from the stage, the curtain will be rung down forever upon the science and prac- 

 tice of Horticulture in the County of Worcester. With few exceptions your 

 committees, when competent, are composed of cripples, or of those long since 

 entitled to an honorable discharge. Even if creditable should this continue to 

 be our policy ? 



Some very singular advice recently bestowed upon the farmers of one of our 

 county towns by the President of the New England Agricultural Society, in one 

 of his innumerable discourses on matters under the sun, would seem to demand 

 a word of comment and rebuke in a report like this. He asserted that the 

 growth of apples in Massachusetts was impossible, and recommended the sum- 

 mary destruction of all orchards. Now it is unquestionable that the pomologist 

 has obstacles with which to contend that call for all the energy and patience that 

 he can muster; yet it may be doubted if they outnumber those which impede 

 or prevent the attainment of his goal by the ambitious or scheming politician. 

 The apple has been grown in our good commonwealth, as the Buldwin, Hub- 

 bardson, Nonesuch, and Roxbury Russet abundantly prove. The exhaustion of 

 our orchards consequent upon long-continued cropping without a corresponding 

 return of the proper elements to the soil, furnishes no basis for a respectable 

 argument. The Durham and Ayershire are no more likely to be withdrawn 

 from our pastures, because once threatened with extinction by the Pleuro Pneu- 

 monia, than are our apples to be relinquished at the dictation of every peripa- 

 tetic sciolist or demagogue. If we have lost the Garden of Eden with the fruits 

 whereof its Divine origin entitles us to suppose it profuse, let us exact the 

 more severely its forfeit — the apple. No, Gentlemen of Sterling and Princeton, 

 do not extirpate I save to plant. If you will remove a tree, excavate simul* 

 taneously for one to replace it, although, of course, not in the same spot. Keep 

 always in mind that the Baldwin cannot bear with impunity a continuous crop of 

 ten or twelve barrels, and that the theory advanced by Meehan is supported by 

 Dr. Hull, that excessive profusion of bloom is even more exhaustive than ulti- 

 mate fecundity. Au reste, as our friends in France would say — base yourtheo- 



