1869.] secretary's report. 35 



who served us so faithfully and well. But no art has yet discovered a substi- 

 tute tor the pencil and the graver; and, without their cunning inventions, all 

 but the tender memory of our friends is indeed lost to us forever. 



Mr. President, and gentlemen : Until within a very recent period, your Secre- 

 tary had cherished a hope that he might be spared, for at least a single year, 

 the painful task of preparing a necrology of the society. In a portion of that 

 duty, inevitable alas, he has been relieved by our honored President who, in 

 sentences far too brief, so aptly alluded to the decease of our late Treasurer. 

 Would that it had also devolved upon him rather than upon the one who now 

 addresses you, to deplore, in suis felicissimis verbis, the loss of him— our latest 

 and best— from the freshly-laid sods of whose grave our reluctant feet are so 

 lately turned. Of a modesty never overstepping its implied rather than defined 

 limits; of a delicacy having in itself nothing effeminate, and yet transcending 

 that of woman ; reserved— perhaps from a too keen sensitiveness to a slighl 

 infirmity of which his intimate friends never thought, and upon which those 

 who once knew him, ever so Imperfectly, never again reflected ; generous, tender, 

 and unselfish, if ever that man lived ; a horticulturist from sheer love of the 

 pursuit, and pursuing it only the more resolutely from the multiplicity of ob. 

 stacles to be encountered, whether of insects neglected by men, or of birds, ra- 

 pacious of devastation, or of legislatures which, protective of one become, 

 curiously enough, a multiplier of the other, thereby working and insuring a tvvJ 

 fold and inexorable woe ; a constant and regular contributor to our exhibitions, 

 through storm and sunshine, in summer and winter ; a faithful and punctual 

 trustee; a devoted associate— of him what shall not be said in eulogy ? Of 

 those rarer qualities, somewhat veiled from general appreciation by the'' reserve 

 already noticed, those who were honored by his personal friendship cannot trust 

 themselves to speak. Yet it is not, perhaps, assuming too much, as illustrating 

 the nobleness of his nature, to aver that his devotion to our interests was often 

 manifested, to his great personal discomfort and inconvenience, because of a 

 pure sympathy with the efforts which he was generous enough to believe were 

 making to foster the aims and promote the usefulness of the society. Nothincr 

 contemptible or mean could exist in his presence without instant detection and 

 exposure. The scorn with which his upright and downright honesty regarded 

 aught that savored of petty trickery, it mattered not how slightly, at any of our 

 exhibitions, must be vividly recalled by many of your number. To the last the 

 earnestness of his zeal for the Society remained ardent and unabated. After 

 the death of your late Treasurer, whom he so swiftly followed, he found 

 strength- to come to this room that he might evince his concern for the 

 selection of a proper successor. Little did the writer dream, .as he strained his 

 attention to catch each painfully-drawn accent of those low tones, that the 

 voice which then uttered them would so soon be hushed forever. That with his 

 last retreating footsteps departed from our hall, never more to mingle among 

 us, one of whom it can with verity be said — 



" None knew him but to love him, 

 None named hiia but to praisa." 



