1869.] secretary's report. "■ 29 



ries upon a partial substratum of facts. Politics, or the craving for civic position 

 however hitherto disappointed, have never yet accumulated our catalogue of 

 apples. The suggestion is advanced for what it is worth, that our honored asso- 

 ciate Jonathan Forbush might supply any deficiencies in the disquisition under 

 review, and thereby replenish the vacuum, no less abhorrent to the appetite than 

 nature, of a permanent failure of the apple. Coming so close upon the ingather- 

 ing of a crop of Baldwins, at least, which for quality was never surpassed, 

 the absurdity of such counsel is the more marked. 



The ravages of insects have proved less destructive than for several years. 

 And there can be but little doubt that, with the exercise of one-half of the care 

 and patience displayed by our foithfiil housewives in the exclusion of vermin 

 from our dwellings, this great source of annoyance and loss to the horticulturist 

 might be almost entirely removed. To succeed in this would, however, demand 

 general co-operation, and could not suffer individual neglect. And yet the 

 writer can point to a lot in the very heart of the city of Worcester, amply 

 stocked with the mullen and thistle, and the starved home of four apple trees, 

 upon which last have been produced, year after year, countless swarms of the 

 canker worm and tent-caterpillar. Of how much less utility is the most earnest 

 effort of the neighborhood thereby rendered. 



But, gentlemen, if Fortune has been unwontedlykind to us in this particular, 

 she has also not failed to supply the cat-bird and pseudo-robin as a thorough 

 set-off. Without them these reports would be incomplete : with them, our crops 

 are finished by transfer to theirs. A late writer in the Atlantic Monthly, who 

 has attained some reputation as an ornithologist by a long residence within the 

 crowded streets of a city, the admirable facilities of which location for a studious 

 investigation into the habits of birds must be obvious to the most obtuse, affirms 

 dogmatically that the assertion that birds will eat pears is an utter, and by 

 implication, wilftil falsehood. Now your Secretary, who is doubtless meant as 

 orio-inal coiner of the alleged fabrication, simply mentioned what himself and 

 oth'ers had witnessed with their own eyes. This very summer, the lamented 

 Ripley remarked that the robins would not leave him a single Beurre Giffard. 

 Not two mornings thereafter your Secretary counted not less than five of 

 these pets of the clod heads and pedants ravaging the Giffards of the Hon. 

 Lemuel Williams, and lest his own evidence should be rejected by his courteous 

 critic and monitor, summoned three of his children as competent witnesses in 

 corroboration. His own Belle Lucratlves were the next objects of attack. "But," 

 remarks our professor of natural science, " the facts are not such ; or, if so, the 

 pears should have been picked in season." Gentlemen, arrogating no peculiar 

 knowledge to himself, your Secretary may be pardoned for suggesting that the 

 imputation to the late John C. Ripley of ignorance of the proper period for 

 gatherino- would provoke a smile were not our tears so recent. His information 

 upon all subjects pertaining to Pomology could not be supplemented even by 

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